One Minute to Midnight
by FabullusVeranius
Summary: With Chris and Shaz's wedding just around the corner, Alex and Gene seek comfort in each other. But something lurks in the shadows, and soon the team are embroiled in a desperate race against time to save life, love and each other. Gene/Alex, Chris/Shaz.
1. Chapter 1

**Collaboration from Fabullus and Veranius - any reviews would be appreciated :)**

The mood at Fenchurch East was not cheerful. Rain was trickling down the grimy window panes, the coffee supplies were severely depleted, and Gene Hunt's expression had reached new levels of grim. Alex, eyeing him warily, recognised with trepidation all the signs which she had come to associate with an imminent explosion. The five of them had been cramped up together in this room all day, and the cracks were starting to appear in everyone's good humour. If Alex had hoped that the rest of the team were going to look motivated and enthusiastic enough to stave off the storm that she knew was bound to break soon, she was disappointed. Ray was motionless and enveloped in an impenetrable cloud of cigarette smoke; Chris was displaying all the animation and intellectual promise of a soggy teabag, and Shaz looked as if she hadn't slept for at least a week.

"Right, so this is what we've got." Alex wearily turned her attention back to Gene as he began to speak. "Sick bastard kidnaps girl. Keeps her hidden away for roughly forty-eight hours. Rapes her and dumps her on a street-corner." He folded his arms and surveyed his team, an expression of intense distaste crossing his features as he caught Alex's eye. "Problem, DI Drake?"

"Er, no..." Alex sighed and regarded him over the steeple of her fingers. "Just blown away by your sensitivity, guv. As always. Never mind," she added hastily, sensing that she wasn't helping the situation. "Carry on."

"Thank you, I will." A muscle twitching in his jaw, he glared at her for a second, before swivelling abruptly to face Ray and Chris. "Questions?"

"Um, yeah..." Chris removed his feet from his desk and straightened up. "Why does he keep them for two days then, before he...y'know, rapes them?" He frowned, absentmindedly twisting and untwisting his pen, oblivious to the ink staining his fingers. "I mean, it'd be a lot easier just to..." he trailed off uncomfortably and shrugged. "Don't make sense, really."

"Perhaps not to someone of your elevated mental capacity, Christopher," replied Gene, his tone not betraying so much as a flicker of humour, "but we're talking about a madman. A bastard nutcase _psycho_. He doesn't do things because they make sense." He turned and looked expectantly at Alex. "Well, go on then. Hit me with your psychiatry bollocks. Am I right?"

"I would guess so." She shrugged, weighing it up in her mind. "Maybe it does make sense to him, for some reason, keeping his victims hidden for forty-eight hours. Or maybe he did it once and it's become an instinctive trend which he now follows rigidly." Alex could feel the others watching her with bemusement as they always did when she tried to get inside the minds of criminals, and decided to wrap it up quickly. "Either way, it's a pattern, and patterns are useful."

"Scary though, innit?" Shaz dropped her gaze to her desk, her voice hushed. "Some poor girl goes missing and you know you've only got forty-eight hours to get to her before he..." She swallowed, unwilling to finish the sentence. "And how must she feel, just waiting..."

"Don't think about it, Shaz," said Alex, trying to keep her tone matter-of-fact. "Dwelling on it won't help us find him, and it'll only make it harder to deal with." She winced at the clinical nicety of her own words. Shaz didn't look convinced. Alex wasn't sure she'd convinced herself, either.

Apparently untroubled by the same concerns, Ray yawned widely and stubbed out his cigarette. "So how many birds have you talked to about this bloke then?"

"Four." Gene grimaced and stabbed his finger at a set of photos tacked to the board. They were awkward witness shots, four girls looking self-consciously into the camera with huge, scared eyes. Four girls whose lives would never be the same again. Not for the first time, Alex cursed the futility of her job. They caught the rapists and the murderers, of course they did, but they always had to be too late for someone. Gene seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "Scum. That's what we're dealing with. I'm willing to bet there's at least double that number, they're just too scared to come forward. Bastard's probably threatened them."

A knock on the door broke the silence that followed Gene's words, and after a moment Viv appeared. "Guv, you're going to want to talk to this girl. Says she's been raped." Muttering an oath under his breath, Gene got to his feet. Viv glanced apologetically at Alex. "She's in a bit of a state, ma'am."

"Right. Okay, thanks, Viv." Alex sighed heavily and closed her eyes for a moment, pinching the bridge of her nose. _The poor girl. _"What's the betting she'll describe the same bloke as the others? How many more are there going to be before we catch up with him?"

"No more." Spitting out the words from between clenched teeth, Gene strode past Viv and swung round in the doorway, waiting for Alex to follow him. His expression was thunderous. "This ends now. Whoever the bastard is, we'll have him. Got that? _No more._"

* * *

Chris yawned and surreptitiously checked his watch. The Guv and DI Drake had been gone for nearly half an hour, Ray wasn't in a particularly communicative mood and even Shaz was being unusually waspish and unresponsive. Suppressing another yawn, Chris reached for a piece of chewing gum and flipped it up in the air. Catching it in his mouth, he mentally congratulated himself and glanced over at the others. No-one noticed. Typical. Chris sighed and looked around for something to divert his attention. His gaze fell on Shaz, sitting at her desk, scribbling repeated crosshatch patterns on the back of an old envelope and looking thoroughly bored.

Chris watched her for a moment, her dark head bent over her desk, her chin resting on her hand. Even now, when he'd known her for such a long time, he was surprised every time he looked at her. It wasn't that she was beautiful – though she was of course, he'd thought so the first time he laid eyes on her – or that she was the best friend he'd ever had – although, next to Ray, it was probably true. It was that she had chosen _him, _out of all the more intellectual, more handsome, more streetwise people on the planet to spend the rest of her life with. Sometimes he didn't believe it was true; more often than not he woke up in the morning convinced that he'd dreamed her up. But every day she was there, and every day he thanked his lucky stars that she was real, because if she ever went away he thought he might stop breathing.

Nevertheless, he had to admit that right now Shaz didn't look the exact definition of a radiant bride-to-be. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked thoroughly fed up. He hoped she wasn't having second thoughts. Not that he'd blame her if she was. He'd noticed that she hadn't been quite herself recently. Little things that she'd have laughed off a few weeks ago seemed to push her over the edge these days. _Hormones, _Ray had told him. _It's always hormones. That or she's pregnant. And that's still hormones, an' all._

"Chris," snapped Shaz, effectively jerking him out of his reverie. She flicked her hair irritably out of her eyes and glared at him. "You keep staring at me like I'm gonna drop dead or something. Give it a rest, will you? What d'you –"

"Nothing, it's nothing." Dropping his gaze, Chris hurriedly opened the file that was sitting unheeded on the desk in front of him and flipped to the first page. After a moment, he looked up again and cleared his throat hesitantly. "You just look a bit tired, that's all. Are you sure you're –"

"Look, Chris, just stop fussing, will you?" she hissed, pushing herself violently back from her desk and sending a pile of papers flying. Chris flinched and looked to Ray for help, not sure what he'd done or how he was supposed to rectify it. The smirk that Ray shot him was not encouraging. Catching his eye again, Shaz buried her face in her hands, her shoulders drooping. "I'm just...it's the wedding and everything, it's getting to me a bit, you know?"

"The wedding?" Chris supposed that made sense. Not that he was particularly worried about it. Say your vows, a quick _I do, _kiss the bride. How hard could it be? Although on second thoughts, telling her that right now probably wasn't the best idea. Abandoning his pretence of hard work, he approached her and laid a hand tentatively on her shoulder. "Shazzer, it's going to be fine. It's going to be more than fine. I mean, it's getting to me, an' all, but on the actual day –"

"Chris." He winced at the exasperation in her voice. At least she'd taken her head out of her hands and was actually looking at him now. Her glare wasn't encouraging, but eye contact was something. "You haven't actually _done_ anything."

"Yes, I have!" he protested. Was this why she'd been so short-tempered recently? Because she thought he wasn't helping enough with the wedding? He felt slightly guilty. But what was he supposed to have done? She'd never mentioned it. He thought she'd been enjoying it. "I helped you with the invitations, we did that together, remember? And I phoned that woman – didn't I, Ray, you were there – you know, when you were panicking about the canopies –"

"Canapés, Chris." Shaz laughed despite herself. "And I answered the phone when she rang back to ask what you'd been talking about. Probably because you called them canopies, actually..."

"Twonk." Ray rolled his eyes and reached for a cigarette. Chris shot him a look. Who needed canapés at a wedding anyway? He would have been quite happy with a quick trip to the registry office, a couple of photos to stick in the album and an evening at Luigi's, but Shaz had insisted on the whole shebang. A white wedding, she'd called it. A church service complete with hymns and, horror of horrors, _confetti. _He'd have to make sure it wasn't pink. Ray would never let him forget that.

"Well, I mean..." Chris scratched his head and looked down at her helplessly. "I did help with some of it, right? And, look, I can help now." Dragging a chair out from under Ray's feet, he sat down opposite Shaz and pulled a piece of paper and a pencil stub towards him. "I'll make a list and everything. What do you want me to do?"

"Well..." Shaz tapped the paper and put her head on one side, considering. "Do you fancy going along to last-minute bridesmaid fitting sessions? Or ordering flowers for the reception...or you could pick out the napkin patterns if you want?" Ray snorted with laughter and Shaz smiled reluctantly, reaching across to squeeze Chris's hand over the desk. "You just turn up at the church on Sunday. On time. And do something about your hair. That's good enough for me."

"My hair?" Chris ran a hand through it, not sure whether to be surprised or hurt. "What's wrong with my hair?"

"Ray, you're a bloke." Shaz rolled her eyes. "Tell him."

"What? You can't just –" Ray stared at Shaz, appalled. Using the back of a slightly bent spoon as a mirror, Chris pulled at his hair, frowning in bemusement. It looked exactly the same as usual, and there was nothing wrong with it as far as he could see. Shaz perched on the edge of her desk and inspected her nails. Ray looked from one to the other in apprehension and coughed awkwardly. "Well, it's...no, I mean, it's fine, mate. It's just a bit...y'know..." He gestured vaguely above his head. "It sort of..."

"Defies gravity," Shaz put in. Chris turned to look at her, surprised. He had no desire at all to have his hair cut. In fact, he had a strong desire not to. And he had a nasty feeling that Shaz would make him go along to the fancy salon she'd picked out for the bridesmaids, and quite frankly he'd rather have all his toenails extracted one by one. Shaz caught sight of his expression and laughed, relenting. "Leave it, Chris. I like it. It doesn't make a difference really, does it? I'll marry you anyway."

"God give me strength," muttered Ray. "One day you'll have to tell me what you see in this div, Shaz. Don't take this the wrong way, mate, but you've got less –" To his intense relief, Chris was spared the end of this sentence by the reappearance of the Guv and DI Drake. To say that neither of them looked happy was an understatement.

"Right." The Guv turned to face them all, his expression one of grim determination. Chris sighed inwardly. Just what he needed. He was getting married in two bloody days. He hoped the Guv and DI Drake realised there was no way they were postponing the wedding to trawl the streets of London searching for the usual bunch of useless witnesses. "Same description, same story, _same bloke," _the Guv continued._ "_Grabbed on her way home after she'd been out with friends. Locked up somewhere, doesn't know where. Raped and left on the corner of the road down by the canal."

"It's horrible." Shaz shuddered and pulled her coffee mug towards her, looking faintly sick.

"It's not nice, is it?" Gene glared round at them all, disgust and steely determination adding weight to every syllable. "So, I suggest we find this bastard before he strikes again. Next time we might have a murder on our hands. And believe me, the paperwork on that one would _not_ be enjoyable. So I propose we get cracking, what do you reckon?"

"Guv," DI Drake protested. "This is potentially the _life_ of some vulnerable young woman we're talking about. The amount of _paperwork_ you might have to deal with is perhaps not the most important –"

"Motivational words, Drake. If we're going to nail this piece of scum and do it quickly, we need all the motivation we can get." He glanced at his watch and clapped his hands together. "And right now, that means Luigi's. We'll get started on this in the morning. Agreed?"

Chris grimaced. Typical. Things had been quiet for weeks, and now they'd been landed with a serial rapist two days before he was supposed to be getting married. Well, screw that. Nothing, not even the combined forces of Gene Hunt and the criminal underworld, was going to stop him getting to that church on Sunday. Nothing.

* * *

Luigi's was crowded, and Gene and Alex had to settle for a table in the corner, next to a couple who couldn't keep their hands off each other. The rest of CID were clustered around the bar and had somehow persuaded Chris that it was his round, much to the amusement of Ray, who was gleefully making up officers in order to secure more drinks for himself.

Chris, to his credit, took it in his stride. Shaz was tucked under one arm and Alex didn't think he'd stopped smiling all night, his whole face lighting up every time she laughed or touched or even looked at him. It was clear and honest and totally unashamed, and it made Alex feel a little like crying.

"Bloody nancy," Gene muttered from beside her, following her gaze. She glanced at him.

"Not a romantic, Guv?"

He gave her a look. "Too old to be a romantic, Bolls. I don't know what you call romance when you get to your twilight years. My gran had a bingo partner after my granddad died. Does that count?"

There was a beat and then she raised her eyebrows, feigning innocence. "Depends on whether she only got lucky inside the bingo hall."

"Bolly!" He pretended disgust, but she didn't miss the way he took a slug of beer to hide his smile. It was rare, seeing him smile. It made her feel a little bit special, a little bit wanted, because they were becoming more frequent, these tiny fleeting moments when she would find a chink in his armour where the real Gene Hunt shone through.

There was a comfortable silence for a few minutes and Alex moved onto her second glass of wine. There was something about weddings that filled her with the stupid, irrepressible urge to get utterly plastered, and from the look on Gene's face, darker now, she saw he felt much the same.

"Young love, eh?" she said finally, waving her glass towards where Shaz and Chris were now even more closely entwined, laughing up at each other with the blitheness born of untainted optimism. Gene gave her a sideways look, as though expecting a flood of emotion, and she made a face. "Sickening, isn't it?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Thought you'd be into all that hearts and flowers bollocks."

"No. Like you said, too old now for all that stuff." She paused and then smiled. "Look at us, acting like we're pensioners already. You must have...what...at least three years to go before your state pension kicks in?"

"Careful, Bolls." There was that quirk of a smile again, quickly smothered. "You might not be a spring chicken but you're not too old to go over my knee."

She laughed. "Promises, promises."

He leaned towards her so that she could hear him over the din, and she had to suppress a shiver as his breath tickled the shell of her ear. The effect he had on her simultaneously infuriated and intrigued her, and she couldn't help the way she curved her body a little way towards him, subconsciously seeking his warmth.

"For a posh bird, you have a very dirty mind."

She cocked her eyebrow. "Careful, Guv, that's sexual harassment."

"You're the one with the filthy mind, Bollykecks, not me. Squeaky clean, I am. Pure as a cloistered nun."

She turned to give him a look but, in a flash of foresight born of years in the police, reached out and grabbed his thigh instead, pulling him towards her just in time to avoid a glancing blow in the back. Completely unaware, he stared at her in baffled amusement.

"Steady on, Bolls, I know I'm irresistible but lunging for my crown jewels in a restaurant is a bit extreme."

She laughed at that, patting his thigh lightly before moving her hand back to the safety of her wine glass. "Don't flatter yourself. I just saved you from being assaulted with a lethal weapon." She nodded over his shoulder to the amorous couple beside them, now writhing athletically and rather inappropriately in their seat, and Gene smiled sardonically.

"Wouldn't be the first time I've been attacked with a stiletto." All the same, he inched a little further away from the pair, pressing Alex into the corner, oblivious to the way she was now trapped against his body. Her breath caught in her throat and she looked up at him, found his mouth just inches from hers and his eyes fixed on her face. There was half a second where she wondered if he was about to kiss her, what his lips would feel like, what she'd do, but then he blinked, and the moment was gone. "Whoops." He coughed and moved away again. "Sorry, Bollyknickers. Didn't mean to squash you."

She smiled quickly back. "Nearly squeezed the air out of me, Guv."

He was avoiding her gaze, and she could tell from the way his eyes flickered restlessly over the crowd that he was embarrassed. She sighed quietly and followed his example, leaning forward to hear as she realised the crowd gathered around the bar was chanting.

"What are they...?" She trailed off. _Speech! Speech! Speech! _"Oh bloody hell."

"Oh Christ." Gene took a generous swig of his beer. "Skelton's about as good with words as I am with a pair of my gran's knitting needles. Can't see this ending well. Bloody poof. Knew I shouldn't have brought him down to London."

Alex said nothing. She knew she should stick up for Chris, for the honesty of his feelings and this unabashed declaration, but to be perfectly frank she couldn't bear the idea of a bumbling, slushy, drunken speech any more than Gene. She was all for romance, but only so long as it wasn't being forced unashamedly down her throat.

"Er, right, well..." Chris trailed off and cleared his throat, and Alex thought she heard Gene mutter _poofter_ under his breath. "I bet you're all thinking I'm a right lucky bastard, marrying our Shazzer." He paused here to squeeze her. "And I am. Honest, some nights I wonder what I did to deserve her."

"God give me strength." Gene drained his glass, giving Chris a dark look from under his eyebrows. "Who does he think he is, bloody Stevie Wonder?"

"Anyway, me and Shazzer...we're solid. And I love her more than...than..."

"Ciggies?" Ray supplied drunkenly, and Chris nodded.

"Even them posh ones we tried at that club. Shazzer, you're like...I dunno...a star or something. All shiny and beautiful and, you know, special, like."

"Right, Bollykecks, I'm going out for a fag." Gene got abruptly to his feet and slipped out without a backwards look, the doors banging shut behind him. Alex hesitated for just a second before swallowing the last of her wine - was this her third glass? Fourth? She was certainly feeling a little tipsy - and following him outside.

He was standing at the top of the steps beneath the cover of the roof, foot resting against the low wall, blowing a stream of smoke into the night air. He looked aloof, she thought, powerful, secure. God, she wanted to kiss him.

"What're you doing out here? If you've come to rib me about my fags, don't bother. I've told you, I don't care about emperseena." His voice was gruffer than normal from the fags and the booze and it sent a tiny thrill of anticipation through her. For a moment, she hesitated. Was she drunk? Lonely? Or just finally fed up of trying to fight her feelings?

"Emphysema," she corrected automatically, then moved to stand beside him, her mind made up. "That's not why I came out. Just got a bit...overwhelming in there."

Silence reigned for a few moments, broken only by the insistent patter of the rain on the pavement. It had eased off temporarily but it worsened again now, drumming hard against the concrete and bouncing off the road, and Alex shivered, closing her eyes as a gust of wind blew icy rainwater against her face.

"Come here, you daft bint. You're freezing." Gene lifted his arm and she slipped underneath it, gave a shudder of relief as her bare arm met the solid warmth of his side. "What are we like, eh Bolls?"

"What d'you mean? Hiding out here while the rest of the team indulge in the novelty of young romance?"

He snorted. "I was thinking more along the lines of standing in the freezing bloody cold, but that too." He paused, sighed. It quivered in the night. "It was a lot different when I got married, Bolls. More of a business deal than a romance. Suited her, suited me, suited her dad. Police officer was a catch, in those days."

She hesitated a moment, sensing that he was opening up to her but loath to force the issue and prompt him to clam up all over again. She settled on speaking quietly, resting her head against his shoulder so he wouldn't have to look her in the eye. "You must have loved her. You were married to her for twenty years, weren't you?"

"Near enough. I loved her…not sure I was in love with her though. Apparently there's a difference."

"Oh Gene, there is a difference." She paused and then laughed bitterly, thinking of her own marriage, her own failures. "Of course, that doesn't mean it's going to be any more enduring. It burns bright and fast, in my experience." She turned so that her body was pressed along his side, wondered if he could feel the hammering of her heart. Being this close to him, it was intoxicating. "Doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. The excitement." She paused, let out a tiny breath that trembled in her throat. "The passion."

He was watching her, blue eyes gleaming silver in the moonlight. "Bolly, you're pissed."

"I'm not," she insisted, sliding her hand slowly up from his stomach to his chest. His muscles jumped beneath her touch. "Just…don't want to be alone. Not tonight."

The door of the restaurant banged a little in the breeze, and a snatch of conversation escaped, entwined with a strain of music, a burst of laughter. Alex moved around to stand in front of him, moving her hands beneath his jacket so that she could feel him, warm and strong and real, through the material of his shirt. His heart was pounding as hard as hers.

"Bolls…" He swallowed. "You're drunk and depressed. I'm just trying to be chivalrous here."

"Screw chivalry." She pressed her nose to his neck, inhaled his scent, the musky smells of whiskey, cigarette smoke and something else that was uniquely Gene. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Screw me instead."

And then, finally, he kissed her. His lips were hard against hers, and when he opened his mouth she could taste the beer, sharp and bitter, on his tongue. It was fierce and desperate and it made her shiver, because it was so very much like their relationship, like the emotions she'd come to expect from him. She didn't want tenderness, not here, not now, not anymore.

He flipped them so that she was backed against the wall and she clung to him, any doubts chased out of her mind by his hands as they slipped under her blouse to smooth over the skin of her stomach. A tiny, nagging corner of her mind insisted that he was right, that she was drunk and lonely and she'd regret this in the morning, but at that moment, she too consumed by him to care.

The door banged again and he dropped his head to her shoulder.

"Jesus Christ, Bolly." He took a few deep breaths. "Not here. Your flat."

She met his gaze. His eyes were darker, focused solely on her. She kissed him again, just because she could, just because she wanted to, and he groaned, fingers digging into her hips as he matched her kiss for kiss. She tore her mouth away, breathing hard.

"Follow me."


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you for your lovely reviews so far! We really appreciate it! :)**

Alex realised how drunk she was as she attempted to climb the stairs to her flat backwards, mouth on Gene's and high heels catching on the threadbare carpet. The thought occurred to her that this was probably dangerous, the way they were staggering drunkenly up a steep flight of steps with their eyes closed and their hands anywhere but the banister, but then Gene's lips found hers again and any reasoning, any rationality slipped suddenly away.

"Jesus, Bolls." He stopped, moving to stand beside her and rest his forehead against hers. She opened her eyes to find him looking at her, eyes almost silver in the half-light and hair gold from the single bulb dangling above their heads, and felt her breath hitch in her chest. He looked tired, drunk, lived-in, the same Gene Hunt she'd so abhorred several months ago, but there was something else there too. Something she couldn't put her finger on, but something that set her alight every time he looked at her. Every time they burst into CID side by side. Every time he called her into his office and shut the others out.

Her heel caught again and she stumbled against the banister, hand clutching his shirt as she steadied herself. He moved with her, steps matching hers as though this was some strange dance they both instinctively knew, and she wondered if he'd noticed the way his hands had gone to her waist, protecting her even without meaning to.

They were still for several minutes, her hands still fisted in his shirt and his on her hips, breathing slowing a little. Alex felt as though she was under his spell, unable to move away or let him go out of some inexplicable fear that the moment she did, he would disappear like a shadow in darkness.

The mood of desperation, of need, was broken only when she started to slide past him back up the stairs at the same moment that he leaned in to kiss her, and his mouth ended up crashing down somewhere around her ear. She laughed, a sudden, breathless sound, and it shattered the tension, lifted the loneliness and replaced it with a warm tipsiness that stripped away her inhibitions.

"Careful, Mr Hunt," she whispered, ducking under his arm and away up the stairs, aware that his eyes followed her every movement. "I might start to think you actually _like _me."

"Not a hope." He was suddenly behind her as she slipped the key into the lock, turned it once, pushed the door open. "Doing you a favour, that's all. Anyway, you kissed me first."

She grinned at him over her shoulder, shrugging off her jacket and then turning to face him. "Oh, very mature. If we're going to play that game..." she trailed off and raised an eyebrow. "After all, I think you'll find-" The rest of the sentence was swallowed as his lips found hers, fierce, possessive, and he backed her up against the wall so that the length of his body was pressed along hers. "Shoes," he muttered in between kisses. "Take them off."

She pulled back a little to frown at him, then reached down and slowly slid them off. She instantly lost three inches of height and she had to tip her head back to kiss him, frowning again as she felt him smile against her mouth.

"What are you smiling at?"

"Nothing." He tried to kiss her again but she planted a hand in the middle of his chest, pushing him back.

"Go on, you've intrigued me now."

He sighed. "Alex, I'm pissed. It's after bloody midnight. Whatever I say now is going to make me look like a poof." She just raised her eyebrow, a smile of her own now playing around her mouth, and he sighed again, eyes darting away from hers in embarrassment. "Just...like it when you're shorter than me."

She laughed, curling her arm around the back of his neck to draw him down to her. "You, Gene Hunt," she murmured against his lips, "are a big softy." She shivered as his hands moved down to her blouse, drawing it up and over her head as his fingers skated over her ribs, teasing the skin into goosebumps. She still felt giddy, tipsy, though whether it was on the wine or on him she couldn't be sure, and any banter fell away into a silence that was broken only by whispers and moans.

They moved quickly then, stumbling gracelessly together towards her bedroom, hands everywhere and fighting for supremacy, clothes scattered in a haphazard trail across the living room floor. His skin blazed beneath her touch, pale in the moonlight and marked here and there by tiny pink scars, marks that she healed with wet kisses that tasted of wine.

She opened her eyes again as he rose over her, strong and warm and flawed and hers, and she reached up with one hand, rested her fingertips against the skin of his cheek. His eyes flew open, the wild blue of a stormy sea, and she marvelled at the contradictions of him, the fierce tenderness, the soft heart beneath the hard armour. Smiling then, she gave herself up to his ministrations, until everything melted away and she was left only with his body, his touch, the thrum of his heartbeat, as her tethers to the world.

* * *

The night was quiet when Chris and Shaz stepped out of Luigi's, leaving Ray to amuse himself with the string of women he was entertaining at the bar. They hadn't seen the Guv and DI Drake for a long time, but then they'd noticeably kept themselves to themselves throughout the evening, and Chris wasn't altogether surprised that they'd clearly decided to call it a day a while back. It seemed that neither of them particularly relished the thought of a wedding, and although he knew that they were both happy for him and Shaz, it was obvious even to him that such open celebration of marriage wasn't something that either of them were particularly comfortable with.

The air was crisp and cold, the velvet night sky illuminated by the pinpricks of a thousand stars. It was noticeably chilly, but the light spilling out of Luigi's lent a glimmer of warmth to the evening.

"C'mon, I'll walk you home," Chris offered, glancing at Shaz, who was shivering slightly despite her thick jacket. She gave him a vague smile and took his hand just as she usually did, but the action was absentminded, and he could tell that something was troubling her. "Penny for your thoughts, Shazzer."

"It's nothing really..." She looked away from him, her eyes darting across the parked cars and shop windows. "My mum used to say...she always said that your wedding day was something you'd remember forever." She glanced up at him, and something resembling her usual humour glimmered for a moment in her eyes. "Course, for her that was because my dad had too much to drink at the reception and started a food fight with my uncle over the wedding cake..." She smiled wryly, but at the next moment the anxiety had returned and she bit her lip, a frown creasing her forehead. "She said that...that in life there'll always be something you'll wish you did differently, no matter how small...but if you're lucky getting married will be the best thing you ever did, and your wedding day will be the one perfect thing you can look back on, as long as you live."

"Sounds about right to me." Chris shrugged. "Do you think you're going to regret it or something? Because that really makes me confident –"

"It's not that." Shaz bit her lip. "It's just...what if something goes wrong? If I'm supposed to remember it forever, I want it to be perfect. I'm just so worried that something's going to happen that'll ruin the memory, you know?"

"Shaz, we've been through this." Chris sighed, his breath misting in front of him in the cold night air. "Don't worry about it. Please. Nothing's going to go wrong." They rounded the corner away from Luigi's, and he smiled slightly. "Well, as long as we keep your relatives at a safe distance from the wedding cake, anyway." The comment was engineered to cheer her up, but she didn't so much as crack a smile. He tried again. "Look, even if something did go a bit wrong, so what? I mean, it's not really all about the ceremony, is it?"

"No..." she conceded unwillingly. "But it's still important. It's meant to be wonderful. Everyone's expecting it to be perfect. If anything goes wrong – anything –" Her expression, caught for a fleeting moment in the glow of a streetlamp, was troubled. "If I'd known getting married was this complicated I'd have given it a miss," she said glumly.

Chris knew she wasn't being serious, but he couldn't help the flutter of panic that he felt at her words. "C'mon, Shaz, don't say that." He cast around for something to reassure her. "Look, when my sister got married, she got the giggles in the middle of her vows. They had to stop the service while she calmed down. Wasn't the end of the world." This earned him a slight twitch of the lips. He grinned in encouragement. "And look, whatever happens, it'll all be over soon, won't it? A couple of days and we can forget all about it, we can just –"

"Wait a minute." The smile sliding off her face, Shaz stopped short beneath a streetlamp and rounded on him unexpectedly. "What do you mean, we can forget all about it?"

"Well, y'know..." Chris stopped short, surprised. "There's things that's more important than making a couple of promises in front of a load of people, right? In the end, it doesn't really matter what happens on the day –"

"It doesn't matter?" She looked as if she'd been slapped. "Sorry, I was under the impression that you actually wanted to get married."

"Course I want to get married!" said Chris hastily, her acid tone confirming beyond the shadow of a doubt the realisation that she wasn't best pleased with him. "I just think maybe you're making too big a deal of it, y'know?"

"I'm making too big a deal of it?" she repeated dangerously, extricating her hand from his and glaring at him. "In what way am I _making too big a deal of it_?"

"I don't know, I'm not saying..." Chris quailed under the force of her glare. "I just mean...I wouldn't have minded having it all a bit simpler, you know? We could've had something a bit smaller, saved a lot of stress and, well, and money..." He trailed off, sensing that he was straying into shark-infested waters.

"So it all comes down to money, does it?" she snapped, her voice rising. "Money, and how convenient it is to you?"As she spoke, a couple of drunks stumbled out of the pub down the road and slurred something unintelligible in Chris's direction. Shaz shot them a withering look. Chris ignored them.

"Look, that's not what I said –"

"Oh, isn't it?" she shot back, seemingly unconcerned now about being overheard. Tears sprang to her eyes, frustration mingling with pain. Chris immediately regretted every word he'd said, but it was too late to go back and undo it now. Shaz dashed the tears away angrily. "And you think right now is a good time to tell me this? We've been planning this wedding for months, I've been looking _forward _to it for months..." She was looking at him as if she'd never seen him properly before, and her expression was like a knife to his heart. "And you're telling me that all this time you were thinking how stupid it all was?"

"Well, not exactly – I never thought it was stupid, I just –" He took her hand in both of his, trying to keep her there, to make her listen to him. "Shazzer, I'm trying to help, here!"

"Are you?" She slapped his hands away. "You know what, Chris, sometimes you are so _useless_."

He flinched. "Shaz –"

"Don't bother walking me home." The words were hard, bitter, final, and they stung like nothing he'd ever experienced. Chris dropped his arms back to his sides and looked at her helplessly. Her expression like granite, Shaz gave him one final glare and turned her back on him.

"Shaz, don't be...Shazzer, come back –" Disproportionate panic clutching at his throat, he ran after her a few paces and seized her wrist. "Shaz –"

"I _said_, don't bother!" She tore her arm away from him and carried on walking, but not before he had registered the tear tracks on her cheeks and heard a sob catch in her throat as she turned her back on him. "Leave me alone, Chris."

"Shaz, wait – at least let me walk you home, it's dark and –"

Her voice floated back to him, colder than the sharp night air. "I'll talk to you tomorrow, Chris."

He let her go. There was no point doing otherwise. They were only a couple of streets away from her flat, and he knew that if he tried to follow her she'd only snap at him. Nevertheless, he stood and watched her walk away from him until the darkness swallowed her up, and then, with a heavy sigh, he turned and retreated, hands deep in his pockets, into the night.

* * *

Alex awoke suddenly. Weak sunlight was filtering through a gap in the curtains and she lay still, momentarily disorientated. The evening came back to her in fragments. The rapist. Chris's speech. The loneliness. Kissing Gene. _Gene_.

She snuck a hand beneath the covers, realised it was his arm thrown across her stomach. The thought made her smile. Gene Hunt, Manc Lion, purger of London's scum, was a _cuddler_. She ran her fingertips along his forearm, the fair hair tickling her skin, and turned her head to look at him. The pale light was casting strange shadows across his face and the effect made him look younger, glossing over his scars and setting off the gold in his hair.

As she watched him, relaxed and vulnerable beside her, she felt a rush of affection for this complex, contrary man. In sleep, his poise, his ferocity, his sharpness had all been lost, and she could glimpse in that moment the boy he had once been, before he'd become loaded with his own guilt, with other people's cares. She wondered if he was still in there, the little boy with sandy hair and blue eyes, the child who trusted implicitly and shimmered with innocence. She had a feeling, looking at him now, that he was, just buried somewhere beneath the surface, hidden behind the armour.

The shrill ring of the telephone shattered her reverie and she jumped, startled at its volume against the quiet of the morning. Slipping from Gene's embrace, she rolled over and pulled the phone hastily to her ear, turning away and cupping her hand around the receiver so the noise wouldn't wake him.

"Hello?" Her voice was little more than a whisper, hoarse with alcohol and sleep.

"Ma'am? Is that you?" The line crackled with static and Alex frowned, sitting up a bit straighter and pulling the sheets to her chest.

"Chris?" There was more indistinct speech, fractured by interference. "Chris, if that's you, I can't hear you."

"Bloody Chris." The voice in her other ear was far from indistinct. It was low, clear - warm and delicious as molten honey - and she shivered, clutching the receiver more tightly to her ear but unable to stop the slow smile that crept across her face. Gene's hand stole up to sweep the hair from her neck and she closed her eyes as his lips trailed a slow, torturous line of kisses across her shoulders. "Tell him to bugger off," he murmured against her skin. "It's not even eight o'clock."

She gestured at him to be quiet, frowning at the phone in her hand. "Chris? Is something wrong?"

"Ma'am!" Chris suddenly came through loud and clear, and from the way the static fell suddenly away, she guessed he'd found better reception. "Ma'am, it's Chris. There's...I mean...it's Shaz."

"Shaz? What about Shaz?" Alex knew she was being irritatingly slow, but the path of Gene's hands as they wandered lazily across her body proved to be too much of a distraction. She batted him away and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, unresisting as he tugged the sheet from her body and sat behind her, one leg either side of hers. This time, she barely noticed. There was something in Chris's voice, some note of frenzied panic, and she put her hand on Gene's thigh, squeezed lightly, distractedly in warning.

"Oh Ma'am...I dunno what's going on. We had a fight, like, on the way home and she...and she..." Chris's voice was climbing in panic and Alex glanced at Gene over her shoulder, saw that he recognised her confusion in the way that his hands stilled on her skin.

"What is it, Chris?"

"She's..." He trailed off, and she heard him take a deep breath. "She's _disappeared_."

There was a heartbeat of a pause. Alex's mind whirled with possibilities - she was staying with friends, she just wasn't answering the door, she'd gone to visit her parents - but she knew Shaz and she knew Chris and she knew that even if they'd had a blazing row, Shaz wouldn't totally shut him out, not like this. She thought too of Chris's tone, uneven with panic and horror and guilt, and she knew inexplicably, unequivocally, that this was serious.

"What's up?" Gene was on his feet by the time she'd hung up, suddenly alert, suddenly a police officer, and she couldn't help feeling the tiniest pang of loss for the innocent boy he'd been only minutes before. She slipped past him and started pulling on her clothes, already trying to piece Shaz's movements together in her head.

"That was Chris." She looked at him over her shoulder. His eyes were fixed on her even as he buttoned his shirt, and she almost smiled at his attention. "Shaz has disappeared."

He nodded, a tight nod, one that showed his concern more clearly than if he'd broken down and wept, because this was Gene Hunt, and he protected his team as if they were his own family.

"We'll sort it, Bolly, don't worry." He knotted his tie and then strode to the door, keys jangling in his pocket. "Time to fire up the Quattro."


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you so much for your lovely reviews! We really do appreciate them :) Sorry for the slight delay with this chapter, but hopefully the length makes up for it!**

"Chris, you're going to have to tell us everything. We need to know what happened before you realised Shaz had disappeared." Alex looked at him sympathetically. He looked terrible. He'd clearly had very little sleep, his hair was all over the place, and his eyes had taken on an alarming wild quality.

"No offence, Ma'am, but can't we just – just get out there and _find _her?"

"We've got nothing to go on, we can't just start searching the whole city," Alex pointed out. "We need to know where to look. You said you argued...so it's possible that she left voluntarily? Could she be with her parents, for instance?"

"I..." Chris passed a hand over his face. "Yeah, I...I suppose...I mean, it's..."

"Spit it out, Chris," said Gene gruffly. A detached observer might have thought him unmoved: his tone was just as brash, just as aggressive, just as unyielding as always, but Alex fancied that by now she knew him well enough to discern the genuine concern beneath the façade. Shaz might be, in her own words, little more than a glorified typist, but Alex knew that in Gene's eyes everyone on his team was of equal value, and when Shaz was in potential danger, it affected and worried him just as much as if it were Ray, or Chris, or even herself. She felt a sudden rush of affection towards him, and found herself wondering, not for the first time that morning, when they were going to have time to address all the things they would surely need to talk about before long...

"Sorry, Guv," said Chris hastily, and Alex snapped back to the present. "Yeah, well we...we did argue." He struggled to remember. "It was...it was one of those stupid arguments, you know? About the wedding. I mean, she's been stressed about it for ages, and we haven't been seeing eye to eye all the time...but she just flipped. I tried to talk to her about it, but..." He trailed off.

"Okay, so..." Alex sat up straight and fixed Chris with a piercing gaze. "You argued, and she walked off?" Chris nodded. "What happened then?"

"I tried running after her. I mean, it was dark, I didn't want her walking home by herself, I was worried...but I was just making things worse, and we were only a couple of streets away from her flat..." He raised pleading eyes to Alex, as if seeking absolution. "I let her go. I didn't think...I mean, I never thought anything would..."

"Of course you didn't," Alex reassured him. "There's no reason you should have. I know – I think we all know – that if you'd foreseen anything like this, you'd have acted differently. Of course you would. But the fact is that you didn't. We're not blaming you for anything, and I think –"

"I think what DI Drake is trying to say, Chris, is don't beat yourself up over it," interjected Gene. "Get on with the sodding story, will you?"

"Right," continued Chris, clearing his throat slightly awkwardly. "Well, I – I went home. I was so angry with myself, you know? I mean, it was all my fault, that we argued. I thought, if I just let it all blow over...but I couldn't sleep, I kept thinking about what I'd said, and what she'd said, and –" He looked up at them all helplessly. "We're supposed to be getting married. I...so I went back to her place...she wasn't answering the door but I thought she might be asleep. I..." His voice broke slightly. "I didn't want to wake her up."

"So what, you just hung around on the doorstep for hours?" said Ray incredulously. "You really are a twonk, Chris." Alex frowned at him. Sometimes Ray could be almost as crassly insensitive as his DCI.

"Well, yeah. I thought I could catch her when she left for work, or something. It wasn't _that _early," he said defensively. "But she never showed up, and I know she leaves the house at the same time every morning, she hates being late for anything, Shaz does." He paused for a moment and blinked rapidly. "So I ran over here, and that's when I called you, Ma'am," he finished.

"Thanks, Chris." Alex turned to Gene. "Where do we start, Guv?"

"Ma'am, we will...we will find her, won't we?" interrupted Chris anxiously. "I'd never forgive myself if – I mean, I don't know how I'd –"

"Give over, Chris!" said Ray with barely concealed impatience. "Ten to one nothing's even happened. She got fed up with you – well who can really blame her, you drip? – and she's done a bunk. She'll turn up; odds are she's staying with a mate or something."

"She's not staying with a mate, Ray!" Chris shook his head vehemently. "She wouldn't. She'd come in for _work. _And she wouldn't – she wouldn't just disappear. Not Shaz. She'd know we'd be going spare, she'd...she'd let us know where she was. I know she would."

Ray looked slightly uncomfortable. "Sorry, mate. I just think...I think we're overreacting. We go and check out her friends' places, we'll find her."

"I think Ray's right, Chris," interjected Alex, sensing that whatever her own concerns were, the most sensible plan of action was to hide them from the others until they were absolutely sure there was something to worry about. "Shaz can look after herself. And if she was as upset as you say she was, she might well have just packed up her stuff last night and gone to stay with someone for a bit. As for work, well if she came in here, she couldn't avoid you, could she?"

"I'm going to go along with these two on this one, Chris." Gene surveyed him, a deep frown etched on his forehead. "By the sounds of it, you're not number one on the list of people Shaz wants to see right now, are you?"

"I suppose not..." said Chris doubtfully. "But I really think I'm right, Guv, Shaz would never just go off without telling anyone –"

"We're not ruling anything out, Chris," said Alex gently. "If we don't find her, we'll rethink. But it makes sense, don't you think? We need to try the obvious first."

"She's right," said Ray shortly, not meeting Chris's eye.

Gene nodded decisively. "I hate to admit it, but DI Drake is talking sense, Chris."

"Look, I know Shaz!" said Chris desperately. "No offence meant, Guv – Ma'am – but you don't know Shazzer as well as I do, none of you do. She wouldn't do this to me – she wouldn't do this to _us. _It's not right. Can't we –"

"My apologies, Christopher, I'll just remind you whose department this is, shall I?" growled Gene, fixing Chris with his most ferocious glare. "You lot do what I say, and right now you and Ray are going to pay Shaz's parents a visit, while I go and meet her friends with DI Drake here. Got that?"

For a moment, there was silence. "Yes, Guv," said Chris miserably.

"Chris, if we're wrong, and Shaz isn't with her parents or her friends, I promise we'll treat the whole thing differently," said Alex. "I hope for her sake we're right, but if we're not..." She couldn't for the life of her think how to finish her sentence, but she could tell that all Chris's hopes were pinned on it. "Whatever happens, we will find her," she said finally. "I've got plans to be at a wedding tomorrow, and that's what I'm going to be doing."

"Thanks, Ma'am." Chris looked up at her gratefully, the despair in his eyes mingled with new hope. Alex wasn't sure what to think. On the one hand, having heard all the details from Chris, the most likely outcome seemed to be that Shaz, either because she couldn't face seeing him again so soon, or because she was upset and needed to talk to someone, or because she'd simply had enough, would soon be found safe and sound with either her parents or her friends. But on the other hand, knowing both Shaz and Chris as well as she did, Alex couldn't help worrying. She knew that the most practical option was to do exactly as Gene had outlined, but try as she might she couldn't quite shake the feeling that, whatever had happened, Shaz would never have disappeared without letting them know where she was going. It didn't add up. And in Alex's experience, when things didn't add up, that was when the alarm bells started ringing.

* * *

"I still think he's overreacting," Gene said as he turned the key in the ignition and steered the Quattro away from the station. Alex leaned her elbow against the car door and watched him for a second, took in the slight frown and white knuckles that said so much more than his words ever would. She had to fight the sudden urge to kiss him. _Impossible man._

"Shaz goes missing the day before they're supposed to be getting married, at a time when Chris should have been walking her home. It's understandable that he's worried. He's blaming himself."

He glanced at her briefly, all bravado and casual dismissal. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "So he bloody should be. What kind of nonce lets a bird walk home by herself at that time?"

She didn't answer, just gave him a sideways look. Now that they were alone, away from the focus of CID and the company of their colleagues, she felt self-conscious. She wondered if he too was remembering last night - the desperate kisses that melted into caresses, the blazing trail of fingers on skin, the whispers that were so much more honest than they would ever admit to.

She felt muddled up, chaotic, confused, because the morning she'd imagined, those lazy few hours filled with slow kisses and hot coffee and minty breath had been stolen from them, and she couldn't help a faint pang of annoyance at the sheer injustice of the situation. The moment the thought came into her mind, it was immediately overwhelmed by guilt. Shaz was _missing_, for Christ's sake, and all she could think about was the loss of her anticipated mid-morning shag.

She snuck another glance at Gene, and then looked at her hands, heart racing. They should talk about this. She needed - _they _needed - to know if this, them, was going anywhere. She suppressed a shiver at the thought, part in anticipation of the image of him in her bed, and part in fear at the realisation that once would never be enough.

"Gene..." she started suddenly, but his hand left the steering wheel to rest on her knee, squeezing gently and effectively cutting her off.

"Let's find Shaz first, eh, Bolls? We can have this nancy talk I can tell you're bent on having after that."

She couldn't help smiling at him. "Mind-reader now, are you?"

"I can hear your brain whirring away like a bleedin' helicopter. Never simple with you, is it?" He risked a glance at her and she met his gaze, eyebrow raised in challenge. He looked away again, cleared his throat. "So, er...seeing as we haven't had this chat yet, does that mean there's a strict no-touching rule until we do? Or is it more like all-bets-are-off, have-at-it sort of situation?"

Alex pretended to think, although her heart hammered first to burst in the chassis of her ribs. "Well, I suppose it means that there are no rules yet, and when there are no rules..." she trailed off, caught the grin that tugged at one corner of his mouth.

"All bets are off?"

"That _is_ the logical conclusion."

He swung the car into a parking space against the kerb and turned to face her, propping one elbow against the seat and watching her closely. "Under all this psycho-twattery and metaphors, Drake, are you inviting me to give you a good seeing-to?"

She leaned towards him. "Yes Gene," she murmured, mouth so close she could feel his breath on her lips. "I believe I am."

His kiss, when it finally came, was the opposite of what she'd expected. The heat, the ferocity, the intensity she'd anticipated after their interrupted morning was replaced with a softness, a tenderness that was somehow all the more breathtaking. His hand found her cheek, thumb brushing her skin as he kissed her once, twice, three times, short, gentle kisses that left her quivering with want.

"You're full of surprises," she whispered, curling one arm around his neck to pull him back down to her, and he let her kiss him for a moment before groaning and pulling away.

"Do you have any idea what you do to me, Bolls?" His eyes were closed and she was reminded suddenly of the innocent youth he'd been in sleep, cares wiped briefly, temporarily away. The thought made her smile and she pressed one last kiss against his mouth before moving out of his grasp and opening the car door. He followed, letting it slam behind him. "Bloody women," she heard him mutter as he joined her in front of the small terraced house, but his hand snuck quickly across to pinch her bottom. The front door opened just as she let out a tiny shriek of surprise.

"Er...can I help you?" A woman was standing in the doorway, hair short and choppy and brighter than the sun, and the sight of her made Alex freeze just for a moment, because she had a sudden flashback of Shaz in that club all those years ago, carefree and _alive_. She shivered.

"Hello love, I'm DCI Hunt and this is DI Drake." He brushed past her and moved inside, ignoring her protests. "You a friend of Shaz Granger?"

The woman folded her arms. "What's it to you?"

Alex stepped in hurriedly, noticing the way Gene bristled at her attitude. "I'm Alex Drake. You are...?"

"Angela. Angela Barnes. Is Shaz in trouble or something?"

"We're..." Alex trailed off. "We're not sure, exactly. She appears to have gone missing. When was the last time you saw her?"

Angela gave Alex a long look, her grey eyes narrowed, before nodding slowly and letting a smile steal across her face. "Oh, I get it. Shazzer's done a bunk and now you lot can't find her. Well, if you think I'm bailing on Shaz to help you fascist pigs you've got another think coming."

Alex sighed. "It's not like that at all. Something serious could have happened to Shaz. All we want to do is make sure she's safe. Have you seen her?"

"Oh yeah, I've seen her." Angela leaned back against the doorjamb, still smiling. "I think she said she'd fought off a three-hundred strong gang of chimpanzees and planned to get the train to Timbuktu."

"Listen," Gene had been standing quietly while they spoke but now he lost patience, stepping so close to Angela that their faces were just inches apart. "I've got a bloody DC moping around my office saying his girlfriend's been kidnapped, and all you want to do is play the bloody fool! Now are you going to answer my colleague's questions or will I have to arrest your scrawny arse for obstruction?"

He was breathing heavily and Alex laid a gentle hand on his arm, drawing him away and back to her side. She'd had another glimpse of his concern for Shaz, for the deep fear that simmered away beneath the mask of nonchalance and confidence, and it chilled her, because if Gene Hunt wasn't completely sure they would find her, all of her own hope melted into nothing.

"Pig," Angela spat, backing away to perch on the edge of the sofa. "Shaz has told me all about you, about how the only things you let her do are typing and tea-making. Absolutely worships the ground you walk on though, silly cow." Despite the viciousness of her words, Alex heard an undercurrent of affection. Angela was obviously close to Shaz, and she seemed to realise now that her friend could be in trouble. "I haven't seen her though. Not since last week." She paused. "Ziggy might have. He's asleep upstairs. I'll go and wake him."

Gene turned to Alex as Angela disappeared, one eyebrow raised. "Ziggy? Bleedin' hell, Bolls, we seem to have accidentally landed in La-La Land." He shook his head. "I thought Granger was sensible enough not to hang around with tossers like these."

Alex smiled. "It's the eighties. Everyone has a cause."

"Yeah, well, in a minute my cause is going to be knocking their bloody heads together." He rubbed a hand wearily across his eyes and she felt a rush of sympathy for this complicated, idiotic, wonderful man with his foul mouth and soft heart. She felt privileged suddenly to have seen him with his guard down, to be one of the very few he let in, and she turned his face gently towards her, moving to feather the lightest of kisses across his lips. It was natural, somehow. It was _right_.

"We'll sort it," she insisted, sensing that just once it was Gene who needed reassurance, and he caught her hand where it lay against his cheek, lacing his fingers through hers as their hands came to rest in his lap.

"I know. Have faith in the Gene Genie, Bolls."

She kissed his cheek this time, needing to touch him, to comfort him, yet aware of their surroundings. "I know we're not talking about us until later," she said softly, leaning briefly against him, "but we'll be okay too."

"Course we will. Un-bloody-breakable, that's us." There were footsteps on the stairs and he got abruptly to his feet, pulling his hand away from hers with an expression of embarrassed discomfort on his face that made Alex smile.

Angela entered first, followed by a tall, skinny man with a shock of dyed black hair and bright blue eyes. He offered his hand to Gene.

"Ziggy Roberts." He had an easy smile, and Alex understood as he turned to her why Shaz liked him. His whole stance was relaxed, laidback, the complete opposite of the obtuse Angela, and she warmed to him instantly.

"I'm Alex Drake and this is DCI Gene Hunt. I understand you're a friend of Shaz Granger?"

Ziggy nodded, flopping down onto the sofa and stretching his long, gangly legs out in front of him. "I've known Shaz for years. We grew up together." He paused. "Bet Ange here hasn't offered you a cup of tea." He gave her a reproachful look and she folded her arms again, immediately defensive.

"They should be out looking for Shaz, not hanging around here drinking tea. Their bloody fault she went missing in the first place."

Ziggy gave another of his serene smiles. Alex wondered if anything ever ruffled him, stealing a sideways glance at Gene, who seemed to be rapidly running out of patience. He cleared his throat.

"Listen, Zoggy-"

"It's Ziggy."

"-Strewth." He took a deep breath, and Alex hid a grin. "All we want to know is whether you've seen Shaz since last night. If I wanted a bloody lecture on policing, I'd've taken this one out for lunch." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Alex.

"Sorry about Angela. She's staunchly anti-institutionalist. She thinks that the solid structure of the police is merely a way of clamping down on libertarian ideas and enforcing doctrine." He paused, cocked his head as if in thought. "As for Shaz, I last spoke to her a couple of days ago. She was checking to make sure I was coming to the wedding. She seemed stressed, but she gets like that sometimes. She always wants everything to be perfect."

"Do you think it could have got too much? That she might have run away?" Alex pressed.

Ziggy shook his head slowly. "Not Shaz. She's mad about this Chris guy. Anyway, she wouldn't want to let everyone down." For the first time, a ghost of a worry passed through his electric blue eyes. "You'll find her, won't you?"

Alex tried for a smile, but she had the feeling it was far from convincing. Gene picked up the slack.

"Course we will, son." He fixed Ziggy with a steely glare. "But if I find out you've been lying to me, I'll have your knackers between a pair of bricks so fast you won't know what's hit you."

Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and slammed out of the house. Alex shrugged apologetically, moving towards the door just as Angela returned with the tea.

"Sorry, we'd better be going," she said, ignoring Angela's glare. "Thank you for your time. We'll keep you updated."

It was with a sigh of relief that she let herself out of the house. As interesting as she found Shaz's friends, with their ideals and their morals and their carefully cultivated rebellions, the atmosphere was a little intense, a little suffocating. She felt as though she was trying to fend Angela off with one hand while shaking Ziggy into some sort of reaction with the other, all for the simple knowledge that they knew no more about Shaz's whereabouts than she did.

She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't notice straight away that Gene wasn't alone on the pavement. He was entwined with a blonde woman, her hands on his bottom and his on her back, and as she looked on, aghast, horrified, sick with dismay, she reached up and found his mouth for a kiss.

Just for a second, Alex felt her whole world tilt, teeter dangerously on its axis and then settle back into a plain of hurt and anger. She brushed past them, grimly satisfied as Gene pushed the woman away, and threw herself into the Quattro, slamming the door loudly behind her.

And she thought this might have gone somewhere. She thought - she actually believed - he cared about her.

She didn't look round as he climbed in beside her, just kept her eyes staring fixedly out of the window in an attempt to hold back the tears.

"Bolls...I was going to tell you, I swear. It just..."

"Wasn't the right time," she finished bitterly. "I get it, Gene. I'm just a shag, something you can boast about to Ray later. Whatever, it's not like I care anyway. It was never going to work - you're hardly Daniel Moore." Her last comment was intended to hurt and she swallowed back a ball of tears, prayed that her voice was steady. "It's better this way."

There was a long silence. "Fine then. Good. Hunky bloody dory."

And with a screech of tyres, the Quattro roared away.

* * *

"Take your hands out of your pockets, will you?"

"What are you on about? Why?"

"Well, it don't look very smart, does it?"

"We're here to find out if she knows where her daughter is, not ask her to judge a beauty competition, you div."

"I'm just saying."

A shadow rippled behind the glass panel, and a moment later, the door opened. Shaz's mother stood in the hallway, dusting off her floury hands on a checked apron tied around her waist. With her sharp eyes and slight build, she bore such a striking resemblance to her daughter that Ray did a double-take. She glanced at him with no recognition, but as soon as she looked from him to Chris, a startlingly familiar smile lit up her face.

"Chris!" She looked slightly surprised, but pleased nonetheless. "How nice to see you. Day off? Isn't Sharon with you?"

"Oh..." Chris glanced at Ray and grimaced. "She's...not with you, then?"

"No." Shaz's mum frowned. "Why would she be? Sunday afternoon's usually the only time she makes it over here. Why do you ask?"

Chris hesitated. "Mrs Granger, this is –"

Holding up one finger to stop him, she gave him a reproving look. "If I've told you once, Chris, I've told you a thousand times. Call me Mary."

"Oh...well, Mary then...this is Ray – I mean, this is DS Carling."

Ray held out his hand for her to shake, and she stood back to let them into the house. Chris was looking distinctly nervous, and Ray deduced with a mixture of trepidation and irritation that most of the explaining was going to be down to him.

"Why don't you two sit down, and I'll put the kettle on, shall I?" Shaz's mother showed them through into the little sitting room off the hallway, bustling out again before either of them could so much as open their mouths.

"What are we going to say to her, Ray?" said Chris in a low voice, as soon as she had left the room. "She's going to be..." He trailed off helplessly.

"Look, I'll do the talking." Ray gave the bookshelves a cursory inspection, found nothing to his taste, and turned back to Chris. "All we have to do is tell her what's going on, and ask her if she knows where Shaz might be. We don't want to worry her, do we? Most likely the Guv and DI Drake are going to find her anyway. Nothing's happened. I'd put money on it."

"That's not what it's going to sound like to her mum though, is it?" Chris's gaze strayed to the mantelpiece, where a large photograph took pride of place between a pair of mismatched candles. Shaz smiled out of the frame, flanked on either side by two boys whom Ray assumed to be her brothers, one perhaps a couple of years younger than her, the other not more than eleven or twelve. Both of them were dark-haired with the same bright, intelligent eyes as their sister. Chris picked up the photo and looked at it helplessly, as if, just willing it hard enough would make Shaz step out of the frame towards them. His hands were shaking, and the frame looked as if it was about to snap under the pressure.

"Give that here, div." Ray prised the photograph out of Chris's hands and stuck it back on the mantelpiece, almost knocking over the candles in the process. "You're worrying about nothing, mate. You're going to feel really stupid when the Guv turns up this afternoon with her, aren't you?"

"Nice to know I've always got your support, Ray," said Chris, his voice as close to icy as Ray had ever heard it. "I really appreciate it." Catching Ray's eye, he relented, closing his eyes briefly and pinching the bridge of his nose. "There's no point arguing about it, mate. I know something's not right."

"What's not right?" Ray and Chris whipped round to see Mary standing in the doorway, a tray of tea precariously balanced on her hip and a questioning frown creasing her forehead. Ray hurried to take the tray from her and put it more safely on the coffee table, leaving Chris to answer her question.

"It's...look, Mrs Granger – Mary – I..." He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes flicking everywhere but at her. "I really don't know how to say this, but it's...well, it's Shaz, she's...she's..." He turned helplessly to Ray, who shrugged and helped himself to a biscuit, deciding to let Chris have a go after all. No doubt DI Drake would have known exactly how to handle this situation. He would never have admitted it to her, but right now they could really have used her help.

"She's what?" Mary's face was draining of colour as she felt for the back of a chair.

"She's..." Chris didn't seem to be getting any further with this sentence. In fact, he seemed to have lost the power of speech, and was doing a fairly good impression of the goldfish Ray had won for his niece at the funfair not long ago. "Well, the thing is..." Perhaps it was time to step in.

"She's done a bunk," said Ray eloquently, through a mouthful of custard cream. Ignoring Chris's glare, he swallowed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "We thought she might be here."

"But she's not," said Chris helpfully.

"What do you mean, she's _done a bunk_?" asked Mary, her voice rising with every syllable.

"Well, she's kind of...gone," said Ray, at a loss as to how many interpretations there could be of the phrase "done a bunk". Mary looked understandably shaken, but as comforting stricken mothers wasn't high up on Ray's personal skills list, he chose to ignore it. "Chris here reckons she's been done in or something," he said conversationally, and Mary blanched. "Course, that's just this div overreacting," he backtracked hurriedly, catching sight of her expression. "The Guv's checking out Shaz's friends right now, and my money's on her being with one of them. Like I said, you don't want to listen to anything this div says, he's convinced she's lying under a bridge somewhere, you should hear him when he –"

"Ray, stop...just stop _talking,_" said Chris, his expression horrified.

"Let me get this straight." Mary lowered herself into a chair and took a deep breath. "Sharon has _disappeared? _Why...why would she do that? Where would she go? What...I don't understand. What would make her...?"

She looked at Chris with an appeal in her eyes, upon which he turned crimson and became extremely interested in his fingernails. Ray sighed heavily and jerked his thumb at Chris. "They had a fight last night. Shaz ran off. Haven't seen her since."

"But...but you haven't checked with her friends yet? You don't know she's actually missing?"

"The Guv and DI Drake are doing it now." With what looked like a huge effort, Chris forced himself to look her in the eye. "Look, I'm..." He took a deep breath. "I'm so sorry. I really didn't...I mean, it wasn't even a serious argument. I know I shouldn't have...but I never thought...we were only two streets away, I never thought..."

Ray was on the verge of stepping in to put an end to Chris's misery by saving him from his own ramblings when Mary took a deep breath and shook her head firmly. "I don't want to hear your apologies, Chris. I know my daughter, and I know that she sometimes takes things too much to heart. But I also know that even if she did run away from you, she would always come back. If that's the case, I don't think you'll have to wait long. If not..." Her carefully maintained composure slipped slightly, and her hands shook as she smoothed her skirt down. "If not, then it's nothing to do with you, and I know you'll move heaven and earth to find her." She smiled wanly. "I think you're blaming yourself more than enough for both of us."

Ray cleared his throat awkwardly. Chris was blinking furiously, his throat working as he fought back what Ray could only assume with some disgust were tears. Shooting him an exasperated look, he pressed on with the questions. "Erm...so, Mrs Granger...there's nowhere else you can think of that Shaz might go, then?"

"Not that I can think of." Mary picked up the teapot in unsteady hands. "She doesn't have that wide a social circle, you know. She's got me and her dad, and the boys...and then there's you lot, and she's got a few friends I know she sees quite a bit, but that's the lot." She clasped her hands together anxiously. "You will let me know, won't you? If DCI Hunt has found her today...or if you need any...any more help. I'm always around."

"Absolutely," Ray assured her. "We'll give you a ring as soon as we hear from the Guv."

Mary gave him a tight smile, and offered them the plate of biscuits. Hospitable as she was, and reluctant as they were to leave her on her own, Ray and Chris didn't linger. It was now imperative to get back to the station and compare notes with the Guv and DI Drake. Despite his confident bluster, Ray had a nasty feeling in the pit of his stomach. As they stood to leave, he glanced back at the photograph on the mantelpiece. Shaz's eyes seemed to follow him out of the room. He shivered. The sooner they found her, the better.


	4. Chapter 4

**Thank you again for your lovely reviews! Sorry about the wait for this chapter, we had to co-ordinate writing from different countries! We hope you enjoy it :)**

Alex threw open the doors and stalked into CID, movements tight with anger and barely-contained hurt. She could sense Gene behind her, footsteps falling just out of time with hers, but she ignored him, just dropped into her seat and tried not to flinch as the door of his office slammed shut behind him.

Her heart was pounding. She was aware that the eyes of CID were on her, some curious, some faintly amused, some irritated by the arrival of another Guv-Drake row, and she kept her head down, frowned at a sheaf of papers as though they contained the secrets of the universe. She noticed vaguely that her hands were shaking. _Christ_.

Closing her eyes, she took a few deep breaths. All of a sudden everything felt too frenzied, too intense, as though someone had taken her world and shaken it like a snow globe, until feelings and friends and relationships rested in tatters around her. First her night with Gene, then Shaz's disappearance, and now this. She opened her eyes. _Shaz_. She was the priority. Everything else could wait.

She forced herself to concentrate. She flicked through the list of Shaz's friends, noting odd notes that had been scribbled in the margin or names that had been resolutely struck off. Nothing untoward, nothing that set alarm bells ringing. Shaz had simply disappeared.

She put the list of names to the side and got to her feet again, moving to the map stuck to the whiteboard. A line of red marker pen was inked along Shaz's path, and Alex followed it with her finger. She was barely five minutes from home, for Christ's sake.

As she stood there in thought, she registered somewhere in the back of her mind that the door of Gene's office had clicked open again. She could hear him moving around behind her, checking on progress, gruff voice tired and irritable and edged with worry, and as he skirted round her to reach Poirot, she snuck a glimpse at his face. It was closed off, hard. He didn't so much as glance in her direction.

She shivered suddenly. She felt so cold, chilled by his betrayal and his rejection, shaken by Shaz's disappearance and the sheer hopelessness of it all. She had the fierce, silly, childish urge to walk over and wrap herself up in him, breathe in that familiar smell of whisky and smoke and man that felt like safety. She remembered the way he had shut down at her words, at her accusations, almost as if she was the one disappointing him instead of the other way round, and felt sick at heart. This was all so desperately complicated.

The phone rang on her desk and she hurried over to answer it, mind still on Gene as he leaned over Terry's desk to read through a file.

"Drake."

"Still haven't found me then?" The voice at the other end of the phone was sing-song, gleeful, though indistinct somehow, muffled by a persistent roar in the background. "I've been watching you, you know."

Alex felt herself go cold from the inside out. "Who is this?"

She was vaguely aware that the noise and bustle of CID had fallen abruptly away.

"Oh no, I'm not making this easy for you." There was a giggle, childish, high-pitched. "Hide and seek." There was a pause, and then the tone changed, turned troubled. "But you're not playing it right. You're looking in all the wrong places!"

Alex considered for a moment. "Why don't you give us a clue?"

"No!" The childishness was gone, replaced instead by impatient, irrational anger. The background noise became briefly more distinct. There was the blare of a horn. "I've waited too long! You're losing! And she's so pretty." The voice lilted again into light, chilling affection. "So, so pretty."

Alex swallowed back a wave of horror. How could they have ever thought that Shaz's disappearance was anything other than sinister? She was suddenly aware that Gene was beside her, blue eyes hard and determined. There was guilt there. She wondered if it was reflected in her own expression.

"You're right, you _are _winning." She swallowed. She needed to think clearly, to tap into her training, to his state of mind. "The other girls...was that you too?"

"Shut up! You're so _stupid! _You're just...you're..._Christ_!" He was getting worked up, his voice loud now and wild with frustration, and she fought to regain control.

"I know. We're losing. You're too good." There was a pause, and his heavy breathing lightened, slowed. Gradually, she became aware that he was humming, singing something under his breath. "What's that you're singing? Can you tell me?"

There came a horrible laugh, so cold that it twisted her stomach. "_There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin, and if you'd like to rest a while, I'll snugly tuck you in!"_

Alex swallowed down a wave of dizzying nausea. He was unravelling. She opened her mouth to reply but then he spoke again, voice a high-pitched whisper.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

The line went dead.

She placed the receiver back in the cradle with a trembling hand. She realised suddenly that she was shaking, shaking so hard her teeth rattled in her head, and when she looked up at Gene, she saw that the colour had drained from his face.

"He's...that was...he's got Shaz. It's the rapist, the one we've been trying to track down for weeks now." She got suddenly to her feet, furious at herself, at him, at all of them for being so naive. "Jesus Christ, Gene, he's been right under our noses all along! He's got Shaz and we've been running around doing sod all to help!" She dragged her hands over her face. "We need to get out there...we need to...I don't know..."

"Bolly." Gene's voice was calm, anchoring her to the earth again, tying her to this reality. "What did he say? _Think_."

She sank into her chair, picked up a pen and closed her eyes. She needed to stay calm, to remember exactly what he'd said. Eyes still shut, she started to write furiously, remembering odd statements, turns of phrase. _Hide and seek. Winning. Losing. Pretty. _Then the last bit. It took longer for her to get it exactly right, but then she scribbled it down on a fresh sheet of paper. It beat in her mind. She knew it from somewhere.

Gene peered over her shoulder at her notes and sniffed.

"This is one sick bastard."

She nodded, barely listening, eyes still raking over the last two sentences.

_There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin, _

_And if you'd like to rest a while, I'll snugly tuck you in._

"Those lines...they're from a poem." She rubbed her fingers over her temples. "I know it. I read it when I was at university. I just can't remember it..."

Gene watched her for a few moments before perching on the edge of her desk and picking up her radio.

"Raymondo?"

The radio crackled into life. "Guv? That you? We've just left Shaz's parents' place. Nothing to report there."

"We've got a lead. You need to get back here. " He paused, then added: "Pronto."

He looked at Alex. She looked back.

Telling Chris was something neither of them was looking forward to.

* * *

When Shaz was a little girl, she'd been afraid of the dark. Once, her mother had given her a nightlight to have beside her bed, hoping it would help. But all it had done was intensify the shadows that lurked in the corners of her bedroom, and she'd sat bolt upright all night in rigid fear, quaking at the thought of the monsters she knew were waiting for her, just beyond the circle of light.

Of course, she'd got over it, just as she'd got over her fear of swings, and her fear of spiders, mostly. As she'd got older, she'd learned not to be afraid anymore, and she'd even learned to love the hours of darkness she'd once dreaded. Darkness brought confidences, whispers, intimacies of friendship and trust and love. Darkness allowed you to think, and people had always said Shaz thought too much. But in the midst of her chaotic life, she looked forward to the few snatched hours of silence and peace that the darkness gave her. Sometimes, she thought she preferred darkness to light, day to night.

But that was a different sort of darkness. That was when you had things to mull over, when you felt safe and peaceful, when you had someone to share the darkness with. Not like this.

Now she felt suffocated by it, overwhelmed by an irrational sensation of claustrophobia. She could feel the darkness pressing in on her eyes and ears, filling her throat, seeping through the pores of her skin, squeezing her skull in a vice-like grip. She had no idea where she was. It had been dark when she'd been pushed into this room, and she couldn't so much as see her hand in front of her face. She knew she was curled up on a thin mattress, and she could see the faint outline of the door on the other side of the room, opposite her. But that was it. She hadn't moved from the bed; she knew it was illogical, but she had the horrible feeling that if she moved away from what was tangible she might fade into nothingness, swallowed up by the dark. She'd wrapped the threadbare blanket around herself, not for the benefit of the meagre warmth it gave her, but just so that she could have something to hold onto. She'd heard nothing for hours, nothing except the sound of her own breathing and, although she despised herself for it, the sobs she'd tried in vain to stifle in the mattress.

Scenes from last night kept playing in her head, over and over, jagged memories that cut her to the core, terrified her and brought stinging tears to her eyes. She saw herself leaving Luigi's with Chris – that she recalled with perfect clarity. They'd argued, she'd turned on her heel and left him standing there in the street, that bewildered expression on his face that she so often loved and that just as often infuriated her. Why had she walked away from him? Chris might not be the best person in a crisis, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would never have let this happen to her. At first, when she'd felt the hand on her arm, she'd thought it was him and she'd spun to face him, torn between slapping him round the face and throwing her arms around him and taking back everything she'd said. But the hand that covered her mouth wasn't Chris's, and nor was the rough voice that hissed in her ear, or the nails that dug into her arms as she was dragged off the pavement and forced into the back of the car. After that, she must have blacked out. She remembered being pushed into this room and collapsing on the mattress, terrified and confused, before the door was slammed shut behind her. But as for the bit in between, it was a blank. And now here she was, alone, frightened, and trapped in the dark.

She forced herself to think rationally. She had no idea where she was, but the Guv would find her. Wherever she was, whatever difficulties he faced, she knew the Guv would come and rescue her. That was what he did. It was only a matter of time. Or was it? Her stomach flipped. Chris would tell them all they'd argued, and what would they think? They'd think she'd just left, they'd think she'd gone to stay with someone. They wouldn't even try to find her. But surely they'd know that she'd never do that, that she'd never just abandon them all? DI Drake would know. She knew about psychology, she knew about how people's minds worked. She'd know Shaz would never just leave. And if she told the Guv something was wrong, Chris would back her up. But what if he didn't believe them? She knew that DI Drake got her way a lot of the time, but what if this time the Guv refused to listen, even to her? Could the others overrule him? A wave of despair crashed over her. It was impossible. No-one was going to come and rescue her. She must have been here for hours. If they were coming, surely they'd be here by now. All she could remember was being thrown into this room in the dark, and she hadn't seen the man who'd kidnapped her since. Where was he? Why hadn't he come back? She didn't understand. Why was she being left here?

Clutching the pathetic blanket so hard that her fingernails tore through it and cut into her palms, Shaz wished the Guv, DI Drake, Chris and Ray would hurry up. If they didn't find her, if they left her here, really and truly alone, if they never came for her...what would happen then?

And then, without warning, Shaz's blood ran ice cold. She knew exactly what was going to happen to her. Hadn't she heard all this before? Hadn't she sat at her desk only a matter of hours ago, listening to the Guv and DI Drake discussing something which tallied exactly with what she was experiencing? _"Sick bastard kidnaps girl,"_ the Guv had told them. _"Keeps her hidden away for roughly forty-eight hours. Rapes her and dumps her on a street-corner." _Shaz crushed the blanket to her mouth to stifle the scream she could feel building in her throat.

No. _No, no, no._

Squeezing her eyes tight shut, she forced herself to stay calm and consider her situation. Could she be wrong? No; she didn't doubt herself, even for a second. She knew she was right. In her head, she heard the Guv's words again. _Forty-eight hours._ How long had she been here, sitting alone in the dark? Twelve hours? More? Long enough to be missed. Long enough for them to do the rounds of her friends and family and realise something was wrong. Long enough for them to make the connection between the cases? If not, then they would never get to her in time. If not, then all was lost. She knew that this man, whoever he was, didn't habitually kill. But what if, just this once, he broke the pattern? What if he found out that she was a police officer, and panicked? And even if she did make it out of here alive, it wouldn't be without a terrible price. Would she be able to look the others in the eye – the Guv, DI Drake, Ray, and especially Chris – and see their pity, their guilt, even their revulsion?

A sudden scraping noise made Shaz jump nearly out of her skin. Recognising it as the sound of a key in a lock, she shrank back to the far end of the mattress, her heart beating wildly. Slowly, the door opened, and a figure stepped into the room.

"Where are you?" The voice was high, disconcertingly so, the words spoken in a sing-song voice that made Shaz want to crawl beneath the bed and never come out again. "Not hiding, are you? That really wouldn't be a good idea..." Then there was a snap and next thing she knew, a beam of light was shining in her face, so bright that she was effectively blinded. "Hello, Barbara," the voice crooned, much closer now.

"I'm..." Shaz could hardly get the words out for terror. "I'm not..." She felt the mattress sink as the man sat down beside her, too close. She tried in vain to scramble backwards, but found herself pressed into a corner, paralysed by fear. Her attacker dropped the torch onto the bed beside him, and the world was plunged into darkness once again. She felt hands touch her face, so lightly. Fingers trembled on her skin, and she could feel his breath at her throat.

Heart hammering, Shaz closed her eyes and tried to think, but no wave of inspiration came to her, nothing except panic, fear and a terrible feeling of helplessness. She shuddered as she felt his lips move to her ear. "_Sweet creature_," he crooned in the same lilting, almost childish voice she'd heard him use before. "_You're witty and you're wise...how handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes..."_

Her spine crawling, Shaz prised the fingers from her face and pushed them away, her hands shaking violently. She felt so powerless, so vulnerable...if she had a gun, if she knew what she was doing, if she could only _see..._ To her surprise, she felt the mattress shift again as he stood up, moving away from her. Footsteps crossed the floor and the door opened and closed. Once again, she was alone in the dark. The last thing she heard before the key turned in the lock was a laugh, a light, silvery chuckle which lingered long after the footsteps had retreated down the passage away from her.

Shaz had been brought up to believe in God. Her parents had taught her, when she was very young, that God never deserted you, and that in your darkest hour he would bring you comfort. She'd stopped believing long ago. It hadn't made sense to her anymore, not with everything she saw day to day. But completely alone in the crushing darkness, choking back the tears with every ounce of her remaining strength, for the first time in years, Shaz screwed her eyes tight shut and prayed.

* * *

Alex sat on the edge of Gene's desk, wishing not for the first time that Google existed in 1982. Her head was starting to hurt and still the poem remained tantalisingly out of reach, the words buzzing relentlessly, fruitlessly around her brain.

"We should have listened to Chris." She knew she sounded defeated. She was tired and frustrated and guilty as hell, and all she could think of was how much they'd failed Shaz. She dropped her head forward and stared sightlessly at her knees.

"This isn't our fault, Alex. We couldn't have gone blundering in expecting the worst."

She looked up and found him standing directly in front of her, so close that if she were to reach out, she would feel his heartbeat beneath her palm. Their row came suddenly, abruptly back to her and she froze, eyes locked on his, breath caught in her chest. Even the memory of his betrayal hurt like a kick to the stomach.

She cleared her throat and dropped her gaze, self-conscious now, but his hand moved out, fingers grazing so gently along her jaw that his touch was little more than the whisper of a summer breeze. He tilted her head up to look at him and she almost flinched at what she saw in his eyes. There was guilt, anger, tiredness and frustration, but there was tenderness too, an overwhelming gentle concern.

"Bolly, about earlier..." She stiffened under his touch. "I can explain everything. I swear. I was being a stupid, stubborn bastard."

She swallowed the ball of tears that burned at the back of her throat and lifted her hand to cover his where it rested against her cheek. "Maybe we should talk about this another time."

He nodded, hand slipping from her face to rub softly at a spot on the back of her neck where she carried her tension. She shivered. How did he always manage to have this effect on her?

"Fair enough." He paused. "We will find her, Bolls, and we'll make this scumbag pay. I promise."

She looked up at him again, and her eyes were filled suddenly, inexplicably with tears. She needed him so much and he was here, with her, caring about her enough to look after her, to stroke away her anxiety. She knew she needed to keep fighting, knew that it was wrong to give into him after his betrayal, but she was so tired and he was so strong. She reached out and pressed her hand over his heart.

"I know."

His fingers tickled back along her neck to her mouth, where they ran lightly across her lips the moment before he leaned in. He stopped just an inch from her mouth, eyes on hers, asking permission, seeking acceptance. She leaned forward to meet him, hands slipping up to cup his cheeks as he melted into her, moving to stand between her legs as she sat on his desk.

When they broke apart, he straightened up and cradled her against his chest, stroking lightly over her hair as they held each other. In that moment they were a team again, bearing the burden of their mistakes together as they waited for the remonstrations and accusations sure to fall from the lips of their team.

"We'll make this right," he murmured, lips kissing a slow path along her hairline to her cheek, and she sighed softly, taking comfort in the rhythmic beat of his heart in her ear. They weren't fixed. This wasn't perfect. They were just two people seeking comfort and reassurance from one another, two people who had found in each other something they'd never expected. They had a long way to go, and a lot to sort out. One of their best friends was still missing. Yet just for this moment, they had each found a sliver of peace.

Eventually, she sat up straighter and he stepped back, putting a little distance between them. She was frowning again.

"That poem. I can't get it out of my head."

"And you've got no idea what it is?"

"I don't know. It's a cautionary tale, I think. A poem that warns you away from something."

He frowned. "Like sex?"

She smiled. "I was thinking more like avarice." She shook her head. "It's driving me mad."

"You'll remember, Bolly, I know you will."

She looked at him askance, almost shy at his implicit praise. "Careful Gene, you're almost starting to sound supportive."

The corner of his mouth tipped up. "You're obviously exhausted. You can't even think straight, dozy tart." He hesitated, then reached out to take one of her hands in his, playing self-consciously with her fingers. "You're turning me into a right southern nancy, Bolls."

She tilted her head, still smiling. "Impossible."

He walked around the desk and dropped into his seat, pulling a bottle of whisky from his drawer and pouring out two measures. She watched him absent-mindedly.

"So, what could this poem be about, then? Avarice, you said?"

"Something like that."

He passed her a glass and she cradled it in her hands, thinking.

"Well come on, then. Let's have one of them brain...frazzling...sessions you're always jabbering on about."

"Brainstorming," she corrected idly. "Okay. Go for it."

"Lust?" he suggested, and she shook her head. "Envy? Adultery?" She frowned. "Laziness? Pride? Blasphemy?"

She froze. "What was that?"

"What? Blasphemy?"

"No, the one before."

He thought. "Pride?"

"Yes! I think...I think it was about pride and...and..." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Flattery! It was about the dangers of flattery!" She whispered the lines to herself over and over, feeling the answer move ever closer. It was just out of her reach, less than a hairbreadth from her fingertips. And then, quite suddenly, she had it. "The Spider and the Fly!"

Gene frowned at her. "The what?"

"The Spider and the Fly! It's a poem by Mary Howitt. The spider tries to entice the fly into its parlour and he eventually succeeds by flattering the fly into following him inside. He eats him in the end, of course." She shook her head in frustration, but her eyes were alight with triumph. "I don't know why I didn't remember it before! My godfather used to read it..." She trailed off, then pushed all thoughts of her home resolutely aside. She needed to focus.

Gene sniffed. "Knew you'd remember. Now get your arse back out to your desk and do some bloody work, woman." He followed her to the door and leaned against the frame, watching her as she sat down and turned to give him a weak smile over her shoulder. His eyes were soft, she noticed, the same way they'd looked last night, when he'd..._focus_.

Just then, the doors to CID flew open and Chris and Ray ran in.

It was time to face the music.


	5. Chapter 5

**Once again, thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews - we really do love getting them! Enjoy the chapter :)**

Gene Hunt wasn't a quitter, but even he could see that this was futile. He should be out there looking for her, scouring the streets, beating the scum who did this half to death, not sitting in his office going through poxy files. He screwed a sheet of paper into a ball and threw it hard towards the wastepaper bin, swearing under his breath when it fell a foot short. _Bloody bastarding hell_.

He needed to get out of here, to take a break and clear his head. Grabbing his fags from his desk, he shrugged on his jacket and strode through CID, grateful that for once everyone was too involved in their work to worry where he was going. Viv's desk was empty, and the sounds of shouting filtered out from the cells, interspersed with the odd thud or crash. He walked quickly past, hands in pockets, fingers curled around his cigarettes like a talisman, pushed through the doors and ran straight into Chris.

"Jesus!" He jumped backwards, more startled that he'd care to admit. Chris stumbled backwards and crashed into a railing, nearly tripping over his own feet in his hurry to move out of the way.

"Sorry, Guv! I didn't see you coming."

"Well that much is obvious, thank you, Christopher." He fished his fags out of his pocket and lit up, taking a long drag and then exhaling, watching as the plume of smoke coiled away into the twilight. "What the bleedin' hell are you doing out here? Shouldn't you be in there, helping the others?"

Chris scuffed his shoe against the tarmac. "I dunno, Guv. I feel like I should be out on the streets, looking for her or something. I'm rubbish at all this paperwork stuff!"

"Whether you're mastermind of the year or dimmer than a two bob bit is irrelevant. You need to be inside helping with the investigation, not fannying around out here like a poof!" Gene looked at him from the corner of his eye and noticed with a terrible, galling lurch that the man was crying, shoulders shaking silently. He stubbed out his cigarette with his shoe. "Oh Christ."

"Sorry..." Chris had his back to him, and he wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "It's just...it's all my fault. If I hadn't let her walk off by herself, she'd be here now, wouldn't she? If anything happens to her, Guv, I dunno what I'd do..."

Gene shifted uncomfortably. Heart-to-hearts were most definitely not his style and he was quiet for a minute, completely lost for what to say. Should he tell him the truth, that yes, if he'd stayed with her, the snivelling scumbag wouldn't have been able to grab her? Or should he – God forbid – put a comforting arm around him and tell him it'd be all right? He sniffed. Christ, there was no way he was giving Chris Skelton a _cuddle_. He wasn't a complete bloody nancy.

"Listen, mate..." he started awkwardly, putting a hand on his shoulder and then quickly removing it. "You couldn't have known what was going to happen, could you? You're not to blame."

"Aren't I?" Chris rounded on him. There was something in his eyes, some desperation, some need for reassurance, but there was anger there too, directed at himself, his actions. "How would you feel if DI Drake went missing on your watch? When you were supposed to be looking after her?"

Gene froze. He knew he should challenge Chris on his assumption that he worried more about Alex than any of the others, but it was true, completely, utterly true, and the sudden thought that it could be her out there, cold and frightened and alone, shot through him like lightening. He took a deep breath. It _wasn't_ her. She was up there in CID, head bent over her notebook, mind whirring at a hundred miles an hour in the way that drove him mad with annoyance and admiration, curls falling across her face and hazel eyes bright with determination. She was frustrating, arrogant, ballsy and very probably insane, yet somehow she had managed to get under his skin, to fill each of his senses so that sometimes all he could see was her.

Christ, he sounded like a right twonk. The day Gene Hunt started waxing lyrical about a bloody woman was the day Fenchurch East went to shit, yet all the same he couldn't help it, couldn't help the way his heart leaped every time she smiled, the way her kisses left him drugged on her, on her smell, on her taste. Last night, when she'd slept in his arms, curled into the cradle of his body as though they'd been made to fit together, he'd been overcome with the pathetic, nancy-boy desire to protect her, to hold her tight and never let her go. Yes, she drove him mad with her big words and her finger-waggling and the way she was so bloody sure she was right, but somewhere along the way he'd fallen under her spell and now the thought that someone else could hurt her, could take her from him, was devastating.

And all of a sudden, he saw Chris in a different light. It was as if he'd been looking at him through sunglasses, through lenses tinted with the mistakes of the past, and now he'd taken them off and it was a revelation. He was no longer the rookie DC with floppy hair and suits his mother bought, the bumbling div who always caught on a second later than everyone else. He still tripped over his own feet, still drove everyone mad with his caution and his clumsiness, but somehow – and Gene wasn't sure when – he'd turned into a copper, a good detective with instincts and knowledge of his own. He'd screwed up, he'd let people down, but he'd learnt from it and he'd carved his own niche in the team, and that was something that Gene Hunt could respect.

So he looked at Chris Skelton, the nervous kid who had quietly, steadily become a man, and he didn't see the red eyes and the snotty nose and the all-consuming guilt. He just saw an equal, someone desperate to save the woman he loved, and he clapped him lightly on the back.

"Come on, Tiny Tears. You've got a girlfriend to find."

* * *

Alex didn't think she'd ever seen CID looking so grim. The few smiles she glimpsed on looking around the room were replaced immediately by a look of guilt as the men concerned caught her eye, any conversation was short-lived and subdued, and the very room seemed to have picked up on the general atmosphere and become twice as gloomy as usual. She glanced up as the door swung open and Gene appeared, followed by Chris, who was, she was glad to see, looking marginally more cheerful. The rest of CID fell silent in expectation but, after regarding them all wordlessly for some moments, Gene swept past them all and into his office. As if by some unspoken agreement, Alex, Ray and Chris rose from their seats and joined him, closing the door firmly behind them.

"The poem," Alex began without preamble. "None of the girls we interviewed before mentioned a poem, did they?"

"No. We'd have remembered that." Gene frowned and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes briefly. "Why not?"

"You're sure it's the same person, Ma'am?"

"Yes, Chris. He as good as admitted it on the phone." She paused, tapping her pen on the sheaf of notes she'd made. "That's another thing that's odd. We never had a phone call before, about any of the other girls."

"The others weren't coppers, were they?" Ray shrugged matter-of-factly. It was a mark of how concerned he really was, Alex thought, despite his fairly convincing act, that she hadn't seen him light a cigarette for a good hour. "Maybe he found out about Shaz and panicked."

"But if he was panicking about that, he wouldn't ring us up to tell us he'd got her, would he?" said Alex with some impatience. "He'd know he'd have to cover his tracks, so he'd just –" She broke off and glanced at Chris. "Well, he wouldn't hang around making phone calls," she finished lamely.

"So...this all comes under your psychology bollocks, does it?" Gene frowned at the copious notes she'd made and pushed them away again immediately, obviously not understanding more than one word in ten. "Well, go on then. What's making him do all this stuff now?"

"I think..." Alex took a deep breath, wondering how best to phrase it. "I think he's unravelling. He's not mentally stable, he's coming apart. The poem, the phone call, they're signs of his mental state deteriorating. He's no longer meticulous about covering up his movements. He's almost enticing us. He's playing games with us."

"So...what does that mean?" asked Chris nervously.

"Well, he may no longer be following the routine he's established," explained Alex, horribly aware that they were all hanging on her every word, relying on her expertise to save the day, when there was so much at stake. "He's becoming...unpredictable. It'll be very difficult to second guess him at this stage."

"So he could do anything?" For a second, Ray's carefully maintained indifference slipped, and he looked genuinely appalled.

Alex knew that now wasn't the time to mince her words. "That's what it looks like."

"What – what do you mean, anything?" Alex winced at the undisguised horror in Chris's voice. "You don't mean...what – what do you mean?"

"We really can't say, Chris," said Alex helplessly. "We're past the stage where we can just assume we know what he's thinking, now. But there's no need to assume the worst, is there? For all we know, she could be absolutely fine."

"That's not what you think, though, is it?" Chris clenched his fists, his words addressed to all of them now. "You think she's dead. Or at least, you think she could be." Alex couldn't meet his gaze, and out of the corner of her eye she could see that Gene and Ray were having the same problem. "You do, don't you?"

At that moment, there was a welcome interruption as Viv appeared, brandishing a sheaf of paper. "This is what uniform have got on the area, Ma'am. They've been to every house between the place she was last seen and her flat, and this is what they've come up with."

"Thanks, Viv." Alex glanced down at the paper, immensely grateful for an excuse not to answer Chris's question. "Right. A few cars spotted in the area around that time...nothing distinctive there. I think we can safely assume you wouldn't do this on your own doorstep; see if those are all registered to people who live around there, would you, Viv?"

"Will do, Ma'am." As the door swung shut behind him, Alex turned back to the others. "Our biggest lead is still the phone call." Sifting through a heap of papers, she unearthed the sheet on which she'd made her notes from the call. "The poetry, we traced that. 'The Spider and the Fly'. He talked about hide and seek, about winning and losing. He sounded..." She paused, trying to put her finger on it. "He sounded like a child."

"I know the age for first offences is falling, Bolls, but even I'm finding that difficult to believe."

Alex shot him a scathing look. "I don't mean it _was_ a child, Guv. I mean he sounded child_like_, almost infantile. All his ideas, his language, it was based on nursery rhymes and childhood games. He's preoccupied with childhood."

"And what does that tell us?"

"Not much, yet. But the very nature of the crimes might tell us something...particularly the identity of his victims. They're young, they're female."

"So are about ninety-nine percent of rape victims, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Okay," Alex fought to keep her temper. "But that's usually a symbol of...a desire for power, sometimes stemming from feelings of neglect, of helplessness, of revenge, even. Whoever this person is, I think he's looking for revenge. Link that to his preoccupation with childhood and...his mother, maybe?"

"His mother." Gene frowned. "Well that's all very nice, but we've still got no idea what we're going to do about it. He called us, he _wants_ us to find him. The bastard could have given us a bit more of a clue. I like clues, me." He clapped his hands together. "We'll just have to see what we can – Christopher, where do you think you're going?"

Chris grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and whirled round to face them all, pain and fury fighting for supremacy on his face. "I've had it with this. You're talking about it like it's a challenge, or a...a _game_, or something. Like you're_ enjoying_ it. Well, I'm not! This isn't just some _case _you have to solve, it's so much more than that! It's _Shaz._ You're not even using her name. I...I _can't, _Guv. I just can't."

"Chris –"

But Chris was gone. His accusations rang in the air as the door slammed shut behind him, leaving Alex, Gene and Ray staring after him in stunned silence. After a moment, Ray made to get up, clearly intent on following him.

"No, Ray." Gene ran a hand over his face and sighed heavily. "Give him a minute. Probably best if we do this without him, anyway." Alex was struck by the unexpected compassion on his face, the understanding. While she knew that Gene sympathised with Chris over Shaz's disappearance as far as he could, she'd got the impression that his overriding feelings towards him were of impatience, perhaps even annoyance. She hadn't felt that there was much point talking to him about it – the priority right now was Shaz, and it was her they needed to focus on. But now, just for a moment, she saw a completely different side to the story, and suddenly she knew that Gene understood Chris more than any of them realised. Perhaps more than he _wanted_ them to realise. She couldn't hold back a small smile at this revelation. Maybe there was a soft side in there after all.

"If you're sure, Guv." Ray didn't look convinced, but he sank back into his chair anyway, his brow creased with worry.

Gene turned back to Alex, his face troubled. He seemed to have aged about ten years in as many hours. "You're sure he didn't say anything else, on the phone?"

"Yes, there was nothing..." But even as she spoke, there was something at the back of her mind, something just out of reach, something she couldn't quite grasp...what was it? Something he'd said? No. A sound? Yes, that was it...but what? Something in the background of the call, something she'd barely registered at the time. And then, out of the blue, she had it. "I heard a...a horn. Like a..."

"What?" demanded Gene. "Spit it out, woman."

"It was...it was like..." Alex screwed up her eyes, trying to remember. "Like a foghorn. I'm sure of it."

"That's more like it! Down by the river, then."

"What are we waiting for?" Ray said urgently, grabbing his jacket. "We don't know how much time we've got, Guv."

"Have you ever been down by the Thames, Ray? It's a bloody big river."

"I know it's a big river." Ray scowled.

"So we need to narrow it down. We need the names of all the owners of those warehouses along the river. That's where she is, I'd put money on it. Secluded, out of the way, half falling down...sounds about right." He got to his feet and looked at them both. "Well, come on then. Who's going to find me those names?" There was a brief second in which three pairs of eyes lingered on Shaz's empty desk. Then Gene clapped his hands together. "Ray. Shift."

Ray disappeared through the door, and Gene turned back to Alex. "Run this theory of yours by me again, Bolls."

"Well. Troubled childhood, for one reason or another. He blames his mother. He wants to punish her, to get his revenge on her. But he can't. Perhaps she's dead, perhaps she's just out of reach. Either way, he can't get to her, so he takes it out on other people. Vulnerable, helpless people who it's easy to get to. Perhaps his hatred of his mother has extended into a hatred of women generally. That would explain why there are no obvious links between the victims, anyway."

"Right. So he's a violent, woman-hating nutter. Just what I like to hear."

"A violent, woman-hating nutter who's got Shaz," Alex reminded him. "And if we go by his previous pattern, we had forty-eight hours from the moment she disappeared to find her. We're running out of time."

"Shit." Gene sank his head into his hands. Suddenly, Alex felt chilled to the core. If she had to use one word to describe his stance, she would call it defeat. But surely that was impossible? Gene Hunt didn't do _defeat_. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Gene shook his head, a new fire burning in his eyes. "No. This is not going to happen."

"Guv?" Viv hurried into the room, list in hand. "Traced the owners of those cars. They all belong to people who live in the area, except these three, which I've also traced." He dropped the list onto the desk in front of Gene and pointed to three names. "Those are the owners. I thought you'd like to check them out."

"Nice work, Viv," said Gene approvingly.

Alex crossed to stand behind him so that she could read over his shoulder. "So if we cross-reference these with the names Ray comes up with, we should be able to identify anyone who owns both a warehouse by the river and a car that was spotted in the area."

Gene slapped his hand down on the paper. "And then we'll have the bastard."

"We will. And then, Guv, I think we'll be just about in time for a wedding."

* * *

Locked down here, in the dark, dank room that smelled of fear, time had ceased to exist. To Shaz, there were no hours, no days, no twilight as the moon slowly swapped places with the sun. Attempts at marking time were futile, so instead she simply tried to stay awake, so that the minutes would pass slower and she could remain vigilant against the monsters lurking in the shadows.

Eventually, she fell asleep, dozing in fractured, troubled snatches, jerking awake every few minutes drenched in a cold sweat, fingers scrabbling at the threadbare blanket as though it tethered her to reality. The sensory deprivation was getting to her. It was like being suspended in a box high above the world, so far away she was no longer even a spectator, just a specimen in a museum case, locked away and forgotten.

When he finally returned, her kidnapper and tormentor, unbolting the door and letting a chink of light filter into the room, she was almost relieved. He was real. _This _was real. She wasn't alone, and she wasn't going mad.

As he made his way over to her, still whispering under his breath in a way that chilled her to the core, she recoiled into the corner, hugging her knees to her chest and tucking her face into her shoulder. She couldn't bear for him to touch her and yet here he was, moving onto the mattress beside her so that it bowed beneath his weight.

"Barbara." His voice, sing-song and gleeful, made her shudder. "Coo-ee. Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

His hands came out of nowhere. The darkness was so penetrating, so intense, that she could only sense him, and when he touched her arm, fingers cold against her skin, she shrieked. He didn't miss a beat, just stroked his hand along her elbow.

"Don't be frightened. It's only me."

Shaz stayed very still. There were tears in her eyes and she willed them not to fall. She didn't want him to see how very afraid she was, how repulsed, how horrified that this should happen to her. Her heart was racing in her chest, _one two, one-two, onetwo_, and she inhaled sharply as he moved to place his head in her lap, guiding her to sit cross-legged beside him.

"Will you tell me a story?" He sounded so pitiful, so childlike in that moment that Shaz was overcome with a violent wave of revulsion. How could a man so evil sound so lost? How could he play the innocent when he had kidnapped her off the street? The contradictions chilled her and she choked back a desperate sob. _Where were they? Why weren't they coming for her?_

"Tell me!" His voice changed. The fingers on her ankle tightened. Nails bit into skin. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes.

"All right!" Hearing her own voice was surreal. She had been living in her mind, attempting vainly to distance herself from this horror, and she felt suddenly as though she had plugged back into reality. "All right," she repeated. He didn't seem to want to hurt her yet – he seemed to want, bizarrely, for her to comfort him, mother him, and she was prepared to do anything that might keep him calm. Slowly, with cold, trembling hands, she started to run her fingers through his hair. It was soft, clean. He purred.

"You're not going to work today, are you?" He sounded contented again, the grip on her ankle slack and gentle.

She swallowed. "No. I'm going to stay here with...with you." He didn't answer, just sighed happily, and she took a deep, shuddering breath, tried to gather her thoughts. A story. Her mind was blank. "How about The Three Little Pigs?" He nodded against her and she sighed softly in relief, fingers still slipping through his hair in a rhythm that was soothing even as it sickened her.

She talked and talked, stretching the tale, embellishing, throwing voices, long after she felt his breathing slow and his body relax against her. She talked because she needed to, because the moment she stopped the horror of her situation would crash down around her, because it was the only thing that kept the nightmares at bay. As she spoke, she tried not to think about Chris, about Ray and DI Drake and the Guv, about the people she'd always trusted would save her. She ignored the clawing desperation, kept it at bay because if she didn't, it would consume her.

Finally, what felt like hours after he'd fallen asleep against her, Shaz fell quiet. She took a few deep breaths. Closed her eyes. Stilled her fingers. And then, like the first drops of autumn rain, a single tear rolled slowly down one cheek, followed by another, followed by another, until she was sobbing silently into the darkness, her kidnapper and tormentor still cradled in her arms.

* * *

The Quattro screeched round the corner, mounted the kerb and came to a scraping halt alongside a row of dilapidated warehouses. Alex, Gene, Chris and Ray leaped out of the car and made their way round the back of the buildings, guns at the ready.

"Nice and quietly does it, all right?" said Gene, his voice hushed. "Chris, Ray, go on." He waved them through the door with his gun and shot a look at Alex. "I bloody hope we've got this right."

"So do I, Guv," she replied through gritted teeth. The man they'd identified, one Kevin Hughes, certainly seemed suspicious. And he did, of course, have the misfortune of owning both a riverside warehouse and a car which had been spotted in the area where Shaz had disappeared. Surely there wasn't much margin for error there? She didn't want to imagine what might happen if they'd got it all wrong. They couldn't even tell if they were going to be there in time, even if they were in the right place. What if...? Shaking her head, she cut that thought off abruptly. "Well? What are we waiting for?"

"Let's get on with this." He ducked through the door and Alex followed him, walking lightly so that her heels didn't make too much noise on the stone floor. Hastening round a corner, they found Chris and Ray crouched against a wall, ears pressed to a door.

"Through here, Guv." Ray stood up and brushed the dust from his hands off on his jacket. "Sure of it."

Gene nodded and pulled out his gun. "Get that door down. Now."

Chris nodded grimly and stood back, before ramming the door with his shoulder. It burst open in a cloud of dust and shards of wood. The room beyond was completely dark. Clutching his shoulder and coughing from the dust, Chris staggered through the door and winced.

"Bloody hellfire. You can do that next time, Ray."

"_Chris?"_

"Shaz!"

Chris disappeared into the darkened room, followed by Gene and Ray. Alex stood back as the boards nailed to the windows were torn off, and light flooded into the room. As soon as she could see what was going on, Alex stepped further into the room and surveyed the scene. Two large windows took up most of the far wall, and in the corner was an old, threadbare mattress, a couple of thin, faded blankets strewn across it. Gene and Ray were standing halfway across the room, Chris a few steps ahead of them. Beneath the window, a man Alex recognised as Kevin Hughes was standing by the wall, holding Shaz in front of him like a shield, a gun pressed to her temple.

Despite her obvious predicament, Alex felt an immeasurable sense of relief at the sight of Shaz. She looked pale and afraid, but otherwise, mercifully, she appeared unharmed. Alex breathed in deeply as the horrific images that had crept unbidden into her mind over the last few hours faded away unrealised. _Thank God._

"Shaz." Alex moved to stand beside Chris. "Don't panic, okay?" Shaz nodded, her eyes wide with fear. It wasn't much, but Alex knew that Shaz trusted her to get her out of this situation.

"Mr Hughes." She attempted a smile, shifting her focus to the man holding Shaz. "I'm DI Alex Drake. I know this is difficult for you, but I want you to think about what you're doing. If I were you –"

"You're not me, though, are you?" he sneered. "I told you before. There's nothing you can do. She's so pretty," he crooned, caressing the side of Shaz's face with his gun. "So pretty." His voice rose, tinged with a kind of twisted excitement. "You've got it wrong from the start. All wrong. And it took you...oh, _such_ a long time."

Alex was startled by how unsettled she felt by this man. There was something deeply chilling, almost inhuman, about his stunted, unsteady movements and his lilting, childish voice. Gene was clearly feeling the same way; the disgust was evident in his expression. Chris looked as if he was about to be sick. Ray was staring at the man with undisguised revulsion, his fists clenched at his sides.

Gene cleared his throat and stepped forward to join Alex and Chris, his tone even but his fury evident nonetheless. "If you don't release my officer sharpish, Hughes, I'm going to let DC Skelton here pick exactly which bit of you to aim at first. He may not look it, but he's a crack shot, so I suggest you hand her over."

Chris lifted his gun. "Do it."

Hughes looked from one to the other, his eyes flickering between them. Readjusting his hold on Shaz, he gripped the gun more tightly, the barrel still firmly glued to the side of her head. Alex held her breath.

Ray edged closer, past Alex, Gene and Chris. "Don't panic, Shaz," he said quietly, his eyes fixed on Hughes. "It'll be all right."

"Mr Hughes," said Alex, trying to retain her composure. "I understand why you're doing this. I understand. It was your mother, wasn't it?" She had his attention now. "She was...she was never much of a mother to you, was she?"

"She was a slut," he hissed viciously, the gun, still trained on Shaz, trembling violently. "A filthy, vile despicable _whore._"

"And this is what you're doing to cope with that?" hazarded Alex, trying to keep her voice even. "These girls, they...they represent your mother? They represent your disappointment, your disillusionment, maybe even your hatred for her? You see them as like her, so they have to die. Is that it?"

"Shut up." He screwed up his eyes, shaking with anger from head to toe. "Just shut up."

"Okay..." Alex held out her hand. "I won't talk about it, if it upsets you. Just...why don't you just give me the gun? Let her go."

"They're all the same." He jerked Shaz violently towards him and grimaced. "Women. Filthy sluts, all of them. Just like her. My _mother._"

Alex could see him spiralling out of control in front of her very eyes. They needed to calm him down somehow, regain control before something terrible happened. Glancing around the room, she took in the rest of the situation. Ray, arms still outstretched, just a few feet from Hughes, was wearing an expression of grim determination which almost succeeded in masking the fear beneath it. Gene was standing in the middle of the room, his expression unreadable. She could almost see the cogs whirring in his brain. Chris still had his gun trained on Hughes, but his hands were shaking violently. If he fired now, he could hit anything. Anyone.

Keeping her eyes fixed on Hughes, Alex took a step towards Chris and laid a hand on his arm. "Chris, put the gun away," she whispered.

"Put it away, put it away," muttered Hughes distractedly, his strange, childlike voice rising higher and higher. "Put it away, or I'll shoot her."

Chris dropped the gun. "You bastard."

"C'mon, Hughes," said Gene, speaking for the first time in several minutes. "What's the point of all this, eh? She's not your mum. None of the others were either, were they? Your mum's dead. So why don't you stop all this nonsense? Let her go, eh?"

"Why should I?" he hissed. "She deserves it, just like they all did. She deserves to –"

"Look at her," interrupted Alex. "Do you really think she _deserves_ this? She doesn't deserve _anything_, any more than the others did. If you pull that trigger, you're not going to hurt your mother. You're going to hurt Shaz, and the people who love her." He didn't loosen his hold on Shaz, but Alex could tell that she had his attention. Shaz was watching her with big, wide eyes full of fear. Giving her a tentative smile, Alex took a deep breath and continued. "I don't suppose you know that Shaz is getting married tomorrow, do you?" She smiled again, although right now it was the last thing she wanted to do. "She is, and I know she's going to look beautiful. It's going to be a wonderful wedding. But most importantly of all, she's going to be surrounded by friends and family, people who love her and think the world of her. People like me, like Chris, like all of us. People who are going to suffer so much if you pull that trigger." She paused and saw his gaze flicker from her to Chris and back again. His resolve was definitely weakening. At least, she hoped it was. She was a hair's breadth away from losing so much that she couldn't bear even to contemplate it. "You wouldn't let that happen, would you?" she urged gently. "So why don't you put the gun down?"

For a moment, he remained completely still, the gun pressed fiercely against Shaz's temple. Then something inside him seemed to crack and his hold on her slackened, the gun wavering. Seizing the opportunity, Shaz wrenched herself free and hurled herself away from him. Darting forwards, Ray caught her in his arms and she clung to him, her breath coming in ragged gasps. He pulled her to the other side of the room, exchanging a look of grim relief with Alex.

"Thank you, Mr Hughes," said Alex quietly, her voice shaking with barely concealed relief. "You've done the right thing."

"Chris, get this bastard cuffed and in the car, now," said Gene grimly. "And I don't think there's any need to be too gentle with him, do you?"

"With pleasure, Guv." Scooping up his gun from the floor and stowing it in his pocket, Chris took a step forward, only to stop in his tracks as Hughes raised the gun again, the feverish look back in his eyes.

"Step back," he said loudly, sweeping the gun over each of them in turn. "This isn't what's supposed to happen. You're...you're doing it wrong, all of you. Not like this. It's not right – it's not right – _it's not_ –" His voice was rising uncontrollably, his eyes flickering between them all, the hand holding the gun shaking violently.

"Mr Hughes, it's all right." Alex raised her voice. "I know you're feeling agitated. I just need you to calm down. Can you do that? Put the gun on the –" Even as she spoke, she saw his finger tighten on the trigger.

In the split second that followed, several things happened at once.

Gene lunged for his gun, Ray threw himself across the room at Hughes and Shaz screamed, eyes wide with terror. And then the world seemed to stop spinning as Chris staggered backwards, both hands clasped to his stomach, a look of pure shock on his face as blood seeped from between his fingers.


	6. Chapter 6

**Thank you again for all your brilliant reviews - they really do spur us on! Sorry for the wait...this chapter proved trickier than expected!**

Ray felt all the breath knocked out of him as he slammed into the floor, the other man pinned beneath him. Wrestling the gun from him, he secured the cuffs around his wrists and scrambled to his feet with a grim sense of satisfaction. It was only as he turned around that the last ten seconds replayed in his head with a horrible inevitability, and he heard again the gunshot, the scream, the thud as someone hit the ground. At first, the scene in front of him didn't seem real. He blinked. Nothing changed.

_No_. Ray felt an empty void fill his mind, and he could do nothing more than stare blankly, uncomprehendingly. This couldn't be right. Chris couldn't be...it was impossible. But there was DI Drake, hands covered in blood, kneeling beside him, shouting something that was just sound to Ray; and there was the Guv, struggling with Shaz as she attempted to fight him off with nails and fists and teeth, and there was Chris himself, a pool of blood slowly spreading beneath him, his eyes still open, but only just.

Reality seemed to blur as Ray dropped to his knees beside his friend. He was vaguely aware that someone was screaming something, and he could hear the Guv radioing for an ambulance, but all he could see was Chris, and the blood, and the shock still there in his eyes.

"Hang on in there, mate," he heard himself saying, although he had no recollection of moving his lips. He glanced up as Shaz appeared beside him, the Guv right behind her, and he had to look away as her tears mingled with Chris's blood. For a moment, he had the strangest sensation that it was him who had been shot, him who was lying on the floor with blood pooling around him and all his senses fading. He was aware that everyone was talking at once, shouting, pleading, but although he could see their mouths moving, he couldn't hear any of it.

It seemed barely a second later that the ambulance arrived, and two men in overalls were lifting Chris between them and lowering him into the back. Shaz stood up shakily and took a step forward, her cheek smeared with Chris's blood.

"I want to go with him."

"Shaz, you can't." DI Drake, her hair a mess and her white jacket horribly spattered with blood, turned away from the ambulance and joined Shaz and Ray. "You've been in the wars, you need to see someone who can check you over." Shaz opened her mouth to object, but DI Drake continued regardless. "Shaz, he's going to be all right, trust me. It's a flesh wound. He'll be fine. I'll take you straight to the hospital as soon as we're done, and you can –"

"No, I _can't_!" said Shaz desperately, not taking her eyes off the ambulance. "Does he look _fine_ to you? I've got to go, I don't need _checking over_. There's nothing wrong with me!" But even as she said it she swayed slightly on her feet, and DI Drake wrapped a hasty arm around her shoulders.

"Shaz, listen to me. I'm sorry, I really am. But you can't go. I'll take you to the hospital as soon as possible, I promise. It really is just blood loss, there's nothing to –"

"No, I'm going," Shaz insisted, her big dark eyes stark against her paper-white skin. "He can't go by himself, he – he _can't –"_

"I'll go with him." Ray heard his own voice as if it came from a million miles away. For a split second, his eyes met Shaz's and something unspoken passed between them, some raw emotion that he would never, however hard he tried, have been able to put a name to. Then the moment was over, and the ambulance doors were open. He aimed a savage kick at the man on the floor and clambered into the back.

As soon as the doors were slammed shut and the ambulance lurched into motion, Ray felt a hollow fear grip his stomach. All they could do now was wait until they arrived at the hospital, and although he knew it wasn't a long drive, it didn't look as if Chris was in the best state for delays. A rough bandage had been wrapped around him, but already it was thickly stained with blood. He noticed with some alarm that Chris's eyes were shut, his face abnormally white.

"Don't panic, mate," one of the men reassured him. "He's passed out. Completely normal. Probably best at this stage. He's lost a lot of blood."

Ray nodded mutely. He knew the man was only doing his job, but he had a fierce urge to stand up and sock him one for his calm, understated tone, his meaningless platitudes. He took another look at Chris and felt his stomach clench with something akin to dread. For a second, he let himself imagine the worst. He remembered the night Shaz had been stabbed, the way that he and Chris had laid into the bastard holding the knife. Mindless revenge, but it had helped. A little. A very little. He knew he'd do the same this time if it came to it, knew he'd take it all out on every piece of scum he could lay his hands on, but this time there would never, _never _be enough of them to put it right.

_No_, he told himself fiercely. That wasn't going to happen, because Chris wasn't going to die. It was impossible. Wasn't it? It had to be. Chris's hand had slipped off the stretcher, and on an impulse Ray reached out to lift it back up again. For a moment, he kept his hand where it was, grateful that the ambulance men were facing the other way. He could feel the pulse beneath his fingers, and its steady rhythm cleared his mind.

"Not long now, mate," he said quietly, placing Chris's hand back on his chest. His eyelids didn't so much as flicker, but Ray couldn't quite shake the feeling that, on some level, he was aware of his presence. "We're on our way to the hospital," he continued, feeling slightly stupid but wanting desperately to break the silence. "The Guv and DI Drake are bringing Shaz along in a bit, she's all right...well, you know that I suppose, but...yeah, it's all sorted. Bastard's being introduced to one of our luxury cells at this very moment." He glanced down at Chris's bandage, where the blood was starting to congeal, and swallowed. "These blokes...they reckon you've lost a lot of blood...well, I could have told you that, you're wearing most of it, you daft twonk." Chris didn't move. Ray sighed heavily. "Bloody hell. I feel like a right nancy going on like this, it's not like you can hear me, is it...but, just in case...well, if you can see your way to waking up, it'd be a good thing all round, I reckon." He paused, glancing briefly towards the men in the front of the ambulance before turning back to Chris. "You're going to be all right, mate, I know you are. You've got to be. You're a div, Chris, but...well, if you don't wake up, I..." Ray hesitated for a moment, then sighed in frustration and sat back in his seat, running a hand down his face. "Talking to an unconscious bloke. Bloody poofter."

"All right, mate?" came a voice from the front of the ambulance. "Just pulling up outside. We'll be with you in two ticks."

"Great." Ray cast an anxious glance at Chris. "And then you'd better shake a leg, you useless twonk." Chris showed no sign of having heard a word. Ray sighed and buried his head in his hands. "Just...wake up."

* * *

They didn't speak as they hurried down the sterile linoleum corridor towards Chris's room, both too lost in thoughts and guilt and shock to bother with small talk or comfort. Alex felt strangely detached, as though the moment the gun had gone off she'd floated up out of her body and hovered somewhere on the periphery, watching events unfold with a vague curiosity. Her senses seemed hyperaware, so sensitive that she could feel the pulse of Chris's body as she'd clamped her hands over his wound, so finely tuned that his every breath dragged in the drum of her ear, yet it was as if someone had reached in and snipped the cord that connected events to emotion. She'd cared for him, she'd stemmed the blood, she'd comforted Shaz, but inside she was empty. Void. A great gaping hole of nothing.

"Bolly?" Gene's voice was uncharacteristically gentle, yet she jumped all the same. He reached out to touch her elbow, to guide her towards the doorway, then jerked abruptly back, eyes wide as though seeing her properly for the same time. She looked down too, noticed with that same terrible neutrality that she was still covered in Chris's blood, huge red poppies of his life blooming across the white meadow of her blouse. "Do you want to change? I could...I dunno...run you back to your flat or..."

She shook her head tightly. "No. We need to see Chris, find out how he's doing." Slowly, with deliberate care, she rolled back her sleeves. Beneath the cotton, her skin was stained with red. She swallowed. _Chris. Focus._

She opened the door quietly, in case he was asleep. As it happened he was still unconscious, his life marked by the steady beep of the heart monitor, face uncharacteristically pale against the stark white bed linen. Ray was perched on the edge of the chair beside his bed, head in his hands, so still and so quiet that Alex wasn't sure he'd heard them come in.

"Raymondo?" Gene spoke first, voice still lower, softer than usual. Ray slowly raised his head, haggard suddenly, face creased with the fear and shock and guilt that joined them all like an umbilical cord, feeding each of them with bitterness, with regret.

"Guv." He got to his feet. "Have you got the bastard?"

Gene nodded. "In the cells."

There was a silence, and Alex felt bizarrely as though she was balanced on a knife edge, unwilling to topple over into the chasm of knowledge, yet equally certain she couldn't remain in the dark forever. Finally, after what felt like eons, she took the plunge. "And what did the doctor say? Is Chris...?" She couldn't bring herself to finish the sentence.

Ray swallowed, then nodded. "They said he was lucky. A centimetre lower and it would have punctured his kidney." He visibly shuddered. "They've stitched him up and sedated him, so he won't come round for a while yet. He'll be all right though." He paused. "He'll be all right."

His repetition acted like a mantra, reassuring, promising, and Alex watched as Gene's eyes slipped briefly shut in thanks.

"Right then," he said after a moment, sounding much more like his old self. "You get off now, Ray, you look like shit. Lady Bolls and I'll keep an eye on him until Shaz gets here." He hesitated, then reached out and clapped Ray on the back. "He won't forget this. You've been a proper mate to him today."

"Yeah, well, stupid twonk shouldn't have got himself shot," Ray replied, and Alex almost smiled at his failed attempt at bravado. She watched him as he left and then moved to join Gene, who was standing quietly at Chris's bed side.

"Bloody fairy." He shook his head. "I knew he'd get himself into trouble one day. Should've guessed it'd be because of a bird."

Alex didn't comment. She knew what Gene was doing – trying to disguise his worry, to shrug it off now he knew Chris was safe – and she also knew that he wouldn't appreciate her pointing it out. So instead she just reached out and pulled the sheet up a little higher around Chris's chest, an action that reminded her suddenly of Molly, of tucking her in at night, of turning off the lamp and putting her book on the bedside table. _The Princess Diaries. Harry and the Wrinklies. Stig of the Dump._

And just like that, Alex was crying. She sagged, leaning heavily on Gene and clutching at the bed rail with one hand, gripped by great, wracking sobs. He turned into her, surprised and tousled and _kind_, and wrapped his arms around her, guided her head to his shoulder and then stroked her hair, her back, fingers moving in slow, steady movements.

"Bolly?" His voice, when he finally spoke, was low. "Alex?"

She clutched at his shirt, embarrassed and tearful, and let out a shaky little sigh. "I'm all right. I just..._oh God, _Chris." More tears spilled over, smudging lines of black mascara across her cheeks, and she swiped at them with the backs of her hands. "Sorry. I don't know what came over me...I just saw him and...Molly..." she trailed off. Was this how she looked in 2008? A body, pale and prone in a hospital bed, teetering between life and death? Was this what Molly had to see? She felt very cold again, and she realised her teeth were chattering.

"Bloody hell, Bolls." With gentle fingers, Gene tipped her chin up to look at her, brushing away her ruined make-up with the pads of his thumbs. "Christ, what is this stuff? Tar?" She smiled weakly. "We need to get you home. You're freezing."

"I'm sorry, I'm fine." Her words juddered through her chattering teeth. "Just c-c-cold."

He framed her face in his hands, gave her a rare, soft smile. "Shock. Happens to the best of us."

Just then, the door swung open. Gene and Alex sprang apart, Alex hastily wiping her eyes and Gene turning back to Chris, but Shaz ignored them, taking two tentative steps towards the bed and then rushing forward with a cry of dismay.

"Oh my God...Chris!"

"It's all right, love." Gene's voice was still uncharacteristically gentle. "_He's _all right. Just out of it, according to Ray. He'll wake up soon enough, the daft bugger."

"Oh Guv..." Shaz trailed off, reached out for Chris's hand and held it tightly in her own. "He looks so pale. Are you sure he's going to be all right?"

"He'll be fine, Shaz." Alex moved in front of her. "You, however, look like you could do with a hug." She opened her arms and closed her eyes as Shaz fell into them, swallowed as she felt her tears soak into her blouse. She lowered her voice. "I'm so glad you're okay."

Shaz sniffed and took a step back, trying for a weak smile. "Me too, Ma'am." She paused. "Sorry about making you all wet."

Alex shook her head. "Don't be silly. Do you want us to stay with you?"

Shaz looked at her almost shyly, her dark eyes huge in her pale face. "If you don't mind, Ma'am, I think I'd rather be by myself. You know, to talk to him and stuff."

"Of course." She reached out and squeezed her arm gently. "You won't be frightened?" _After all you've been through_, she didn't add.

Shaz smiled properly this time. "What, with my hero to protect me?" She brushed Chris's hair fondly off his forehead, fingers lingering on the skin of his face. He looked younger, Alex thought. More innocent. "I can't think about anything at the moment," Shaz added after a pause, serious now. "I just want to concentrate on Chris for the time being." Her voice was fierce with determination and Alex nodded. If Shaz didn't want to talk just yet, she wasn't going to push her.

"Right then." Gene appeared at her elbow. He'd been lurking in the corner of the room under the pretence of examining the medical equipment, scared off by their girly chat, but now he gave Shaz a nod, a look full of understanding. "Keep us updated, Granger. I'll escort Lady Bolls here back home and then get a bit of kip." There was a beat, and then he added: "I'm at the end of the phone, Shaz. Whenever you need me."

Alex bit back a smile as he steered her out of the room. He was arrogant, overbearing and tougher than old boots, but he had a good heart and a kind nature. He understood the hell Shaz had endured but equally he knew that going over it now would only shatter her carefully constructed calm, and as she followed him out of the hospital Alex wondered how on earth she could ever tell him all this. How she could ever show him how complex he was, and how very much she wanted to make him better. She settled for taking his hand.

The drive to her flat was spent largely in silence. Now that the shock had worn off she felt cold and drained, and she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and forget the last few days had ever happened. She glanced across at Gene. His eyes were on the road but his grip on the steering wheel was tight, his whole body taut with tension.

"It's okay now," she said quietly. "It's all over."

There was a tiny hitch in his breath, and then he sighed deeply. "I know. It's just...been a hell of a week."

She leaned her head back against the seat. "Tell me about it. There's nothing I want more than a long, hot bath."

His eyes flicked across to her, and for the first time that day there was a glimmer of laughter there. "Nothing I want more than you in a long, hot bath either, Bolls."

She smiled but the expression was short-lived, curling quickly away to nothing as she remembered. Their night together. Her hopes. His kisses. The blonde woman. Betrayal wound like a spring in her stomach.

"Who is she, Gene?" There were a hundred different ways she would have chosen to start this conversation, and asking the question outright wasn't one of them. She closed her eyes. Did she even want to know? Was she just another floozy Gene had picked up? A former lover, maybe? An old flame, looking for a repeat performance? She suddenly didn't want to be having this conversation, not now, not here, not like this, still covered in Chris's blood and her own tears, but she couldn't take the words back and so she just waited, quiet and exhausted.

There was a long pause. His hands fidgeted on the steering wheel and he sighed. "She's my girlfriend."

"Your _what_?"

He scowled at her. "No need to sound so shocked. I'm not incapable of having a girlfriend, you know. Just because I don't spread it round CID it doesn't mean it's not true."

She let out a long breath. She didn't know how to feel – cheapened? He'd slept with her while he was supposedly going out with the mystery blonde, after all. Flattered that she'd been worth the risk? Devastated that he was already involved? She rubbed her eyes tiredly with the fingers of one hand, trying to clear her head. He was obviously expecting some kind of response – she just wasn't sure what it was going to be yet.

"So..." she stopped, thought. "What does that mean?"

His eyes slid across to her, and in the twilight they glinted silver. "That's up to you."

"_What?_ We're not having a bloody ménage à trois, Gene!" She drew her knees up to her chest and gaped at him, dumbfounded. He gave her a withering look.

"Don't be daft. I meant...it's up to you what happens next. If you think this..._us..._might be going somewhere then I'll dump her. If this is just a shag..." He let the rest of the sentence hang unuttered in the air and she felt herself go cold. The thought of him with someone else, holding them, kissing them, making love to them the same way he had to her...it made her feel sick.

"Then what? You'd keep her on? Christ, Gene, you're colder than I thought." She turned her head sharply away to stare out of the window, exhausted again, on the verge of tears.

"Alex? Oh shit, Bolls, don't cry." He glanced at her nervously from the corner of his eye and then swung the car into a lay-by, yanking on the handbrake and moving in his seat to face her. Gently, he reached out and stroked his fingertips over her jaw, guiding her head back to look at him. "I was being an arse. I just..." he trailed off, made a sound of frustration in the back of his throat. "I'm shit at this relationship stuff. I don't know what to say."

She finally lifted her eyes to his, studied what she saw there. For the first time since waking up together that morning, and for one of the only times since she'd arrived, his face was open, honest, almost pleading. She moved her hand to rest above his where it cupped her cheek.

"I don't want this to be just a shag," she said after a pause, voice quiet against the background hum of traffic. He smiled at her, a tiny, rare smile that made her spine tingle.

"Me neither." There was a pause. "All that stuff before, about keeping her on...I was being a twat. Putting on a show in case you said you didn't want anything more than last night." He sniffed and looked away, obviously embarrassed. "Didn't mean any of it. It's you, Alex. It's always been you."

She squeezed his hand lightly until he raised his eyes to hers, and then gave him a slow, warm smile. "Take me home, Gene," she murmured, and he did.

As the Quattro roared through the quiet streets, Alex sat back and watched the world go by. Houses, shops, road signs and people blurred into one against the backdrop of the night sky, illuminated briefly by snatches of orange light spilling from street lamps, and for the first time that day she let herself relax, let the interior of the Quattro become her universe. The hum of the radio, Gene's breathing, the purr of the engine blended into a soft lullaby that carried her into sleep, and she only awoke when her passenger door opened to reveal Gene peering in.

"We're here, Bolls." He reached inside and took her hand to help her out. She felt dazed and leaned heavily against him as he guided her up the stairs to her flat, his hand tucked protectively into the curve of her waist.

He left her in the sitting room and then drew her a bath, returning only briefly to peel off her clothes with heartbreaking tenderness, his hands warm and wet on her skin. He didn't try to kiss her, to touch her, just helped her into the tub and then led her through the motions, soaking her with the sponge until Chris's blood was gone and the water had turned red. She let him dry her, his big, rough hands achingly gentle as they skimmed her body, and only then did she come back to life, her body tingling with warmth, with renewed life. She was captivated by him, enchanted, totally under his spell, and she moved with him almost as if they were dancing.

"Gene..." she started, and then trailed off. How could she possibly tell him everything she wanted him to know? How could she explain that his every touch set her on fire? How could she express her gratitude for his support, for his kindness? She didn't remember the last time anyone had looked after her like that, the last time anyone had touched her so carefully, so tenderly, and she almost wanted to cry at his compassion. "Thank you," she whispered finally, and he looked away, embarrassed that she should see him so open, so unguarded.

"Nothing to thank me for," he answered gruffly, but he didn't move her arms from where they had slipped around his neck, and as she finally tilted her head up to his, he melted into her kiss. It was torturously soft, a quiet expression of gratitude and relief and too many other emotions to ever put into words, and when he finally let her go, she felt as though she'd lost a part of her soul.

"Come to bed with me," she said, voice low and soft and heavy with tiredness, and he hesitated, just for a second. She smiled, shook her head. "Not like that. I don't think either of us is up to that tonight. Just..." she paused, suddenly shy. "Hold me?"

He nodded, a ghost of a smile flickering across his face, and let her lead him to her bedroom and then down onto the soft red sheets. He undressed quickly and quietly and then slid in behind her, fitting his chest to her back and slipping an arm gently around her waist.

There were no more words after that, just the simple peace of two people who understand each other completely, who take comfort simply in the other's presence. Alex lay awake for a while, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing in the quiet of the room, and then, bathed in the pale light of a sedate moon, she slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

Shaz looked at the clock on the wall for what felt like the thousandth time since she'd entered the room. The minute hand was edging past the hour, marking time with a kind of pointless precision. It might have been nine in the evening or three in the morning; Shaz had no concept of how long she'd been in here. She just kept looking, kept telling herself: _when the hand reaches the quarter mark...when it gets to half-way...on the hour...he'll wake up. _But he hadn't.

A nurse had popped her head into the room not long ago and suggested, with a sympathetic smile, that Shaz might as well go home and get some sleep. She wasn't doing any good being here, she'd told her, and if she was anything like as exhausted as she looked, she'd be far better off tucked up in bed asleep, and she could come back first thing in the morning. But Shaz had refused; there was no way she was going anywhere, least of all back home to sleep.

With an almost inaudible sigh, Shaz turned away from the clock and back to Chris. He was lying motionless beneath the sheets, his face pale and drawn, his eyes shut and his breathing light. The smell of disinfectant was overpowering, and it made Shaz feel slightly sick, because she knew what it was masking. Her own clothes were still stained with Chris's blood, and although she'd scrubbed her hands beneath the cold tap until they were numb and raw, her stomach still twisted when she looked at them and remembered the red water swirling down the plughole.

Swallowing back the tears that threatened to spill, she reached out and touched his hair, winding a strand around her finger. The blood which she'd been afraid would still be there had been rinsed out, just as it had been washed from his face, so that, unless she lifted the sheets to see the bandage, he might have been merely sleeping. All she wanted at that moment was for him to open his eyes and smile, or say something, or even just look at her, so that she'd be able to breathe again without feeling as if she was going to choke.

"Chris," she tried, quietly, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it gently. "Chris, they say...the doctors say I should talk to you, they think it'll help you wake up." She swallowed. "I hope so. It's funny, you...you see it on telly, don't you? Never think it'll happen in real life. Always works, though, doesn't it? They always wake up." She smiled half-heartedly, but it quivered and died on her lips almost instantly. Taking a deep breath, she tried to control the quaver in her voice. "Chris, please wake up. I...I don't know what I'll do if you don't. It's not fair..." A single tear slid down her cheek, and she bit her lip, turning away from him.

"You know, I was thinking about...about the day we first met." She swallowed, blinking back the tears. "You turned up with Ray and the Guv, you'd just come all the way down from Manchester and you had no idea where you were or who anyone was and...well, I hadn't been working there long either, but I kind of knew what I was doing by then. Anyway, Ray had gone off somewhere with the Guv and left you behind, and you came over and asked me if I liked David Bowie –"

"Kim Wilde." Chris's tired voice reached her ears. "I asked you if you liked Kim Wilde."

"Chris!" Shaz had never before experienced anything as powerful as the tide of relief that washed over her at that moment. She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. "Oh, Chris, you're awake."

"Just about," he whispered hoarsely, wincing in pain. "Bloody hell, I feel like I've gone twelve rounds with Larry Holmes."

Shaz laughed and touched his cheek. "I think you'd be looking even worse if you had."

"How bad is it?" he asked seriously.

"Could be worse." She ruffled his hair. "Don't worry, you're still devastatingly handsome. It's just the bullet hole in your stomach you need to worry about."

"Right. I'll bear that in mind." He fingered the bandage gingerly and flinched as his fingers found the patch that was still sore despite the numerous painkillers he'd been administered. "Can't believe I let the bastard shoot me," he muttered, avoiding her eye, his voice slightly stronger now. "Ray must think I'm a right div."

"Ray's just worried about you," said Shaz firmly. "We all are."

At that, he looked away from her, taking in the tubes and drips that hooked into his arms and snaked beneath the sheets, and the bleeping machines wired to the bed. "Blimey, I'm really sorry, Shazzer. You must have been worried sick –"

"No, I'm sorry." Shaz felt tears sting her eyes and blinked furiously. She was determined not to let herself cry. "This is all my fault. If I hadn't been so _stupid, _if I hadn't let myself get so worked up about the wedding, we'd never have argued and none of this would ever have happened."

"Don't be an idiot." He struggled to sit upright, wincing with the effort. "Of course it's not your fault, Shazzer. I should have helped you more from the start, I should have realised you were worrying about the wedding and everything. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine." She opened her mouth to object, but he squeezed her hand to silence her. "Wait. I just...this is going to sound really stupid, and if Ray was here he'd never let me hear the end of it, but...I wouldn't give you up for the world, Shazzer. I don't know what I'd do without you, and if I had to get shot again to get you back, I would." He sounded so earnest that Shaz had to attempt unsuccessfully to bite back a laugh. Chris looked slightly affronted. "I mean it, Shaz! I really would."

"I know, I know." Her smile wavered and for a second she hovered between laughter and tears. "It's just...oh Chris, I'm so glad you're here. I thought...I thought I'd _lost _you."

"Nah, it'll take more than one stupid bullet to get rid of me," he said with a grin, his false bravado going some way towards cheering her up. "I thought I'd lost _you_." He gripped her hand tightly as a thought occurred to him. "Shaz, he...he didn't, y'know...did he?"

Shaz shuddered, the memories she'd been avoiding thinking about ever since her rescue flooding back to her in horrible detail. "He didn't do anything. You got there just in time. I thought...oh God, Chris, I thought you were never going to find me." Without warning, the tears she'd tried so hard to hold back broke through the floodgates, and she found herself sobbing uncontrollably, holding onto Chris's hand like a lifeline, as if it were the only thing keeping her afloat.

"Shaz, don't cry..." The bed creaked as he sat up against the pillows and pulled her into his arms. "You're all right now, and that bastard is where he belongs. You're safe now, I promise." Although she knew it was true, Shaz clung to Chris and cried harder, overwhelmed by the sudden recognition of how lucky she was that she was still here, that Chris had woken up, and that really, after all that had happened, nothing had changed. Chris said nothing, just held her tightly and stroked her hair until her tears were exhausted and she drew back with a watery smile.

"This isn't quite how tonight was supposed to go, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

She rolled her eyes, the effect only slightly marred by the tear tracks on her cheeks. "I suppose getting shot is bound to throw you off a bit. This was supposed to be our wedding night."

"Oh..." His brow creased for a moment. "Oh bloody hell, we missed our own wedding."

"Yeah, we did." Suddenly, inexplicably, the whole thing seemed very funny. Shaz giggled, drying her eyes on her sleeve. "Oh God. All that preparation. And everyone coming down here specially. I hope they can forgive us."

"What are we going to do?" Chris asked, visibly torn between bewilderment and amusement.

"Well..." she considered for a moment, her head on one side. "There's no rush, is there? It's not the end of the world."

"You've changed your tune," he said, surprised.

"Yeah, well...it makes you think, doesn't it?" she said quietly, running her finger along one of the tubes attached to Chris's arm. "This wedding was everything to me for months, but...I don't know, maybe it's not so important after all."

Chris looked slightly alarmed. "You do still want to get married, though, don't you?"

"Of course I do! I just mean...if we can't do it for a while, it doesn't matter to me. Just...you're still here, that's what's important."

"Yeah, I suppose. Bloody hell, Shazzer, we're a right pair, aren't we?"

"Unlucky, you mean?"

"Well, yeah. Could have been worse I suppose, at least we're both still here to tell the tale." For a moment, he looked unusually pensive, but then he visibly perked up as a thought struck him. "Hey, what do you reckon a bullet wound's worth at Luigi's?" he asked eagerly. "Must be a couple of pints on the house at least."

"You're not going anywhere near Luigi's any time soon," she told him firmly, spoiling the effect by grinning despite herself. "You'll be in here for a bit yet, I reckon."

Chris's face fell. "D'you think? Bloody hell, what am I supposed to do in here? I mean, I reckon I deserve a few visits from you lot, but apart from that...not exactly CID, is it?"

Shaz raised one eyebrow. "No, thank goodness. You're meant to be resting, not charging round beating people up. How about I bring you some books in? Your literary horizons could do with expanding." Chris looked distinctly unimpressed. "What about crosswords? They're supposed to be good for keeping your brain activity going." She laughed at the expression of unequivocal distaste on his face. "Or I could bring you my mum's spare telly and you could watch the football."

He winked at her. "You're a diamond, Shaz."

"I know. I put up with you, don't I?" She patted his hand and got to her feet. "I'm going to go and give Ray a call, tell him you're back in the land of the living."

"If you want to mention to him that I've pulled through against all odds, and that I'll probably have this scar for the rest of my life –"

"I think I'll stick to the facts, if you don't mind. You can give Ray your Oscar-winning tragic hero performance later." She turned to leave. "I won't be long."

"Shaz?"

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "What?"

"It's just..." He shrugged and gave her a lopsided smile. "I love you."

She smiled. "Love you too. Now go back to sleep, you look like an extra from Dawn of the Dead."

"Thanks very much."

Giving him a wave, she closed the door and hurried off to find a telephone. She couldn't wait to tell Ray, the Guv and DI Drake the news. At last, it was over. Everything was going to be all right.


	7. Chapter 7

**Once again, thank you all so much for your wonderful reviews - we really love reading them! This is the second-to-last chapter of this story, and we'd like to thank you all for sticking with us so far :) **

**Bodiam Castle, which we've used in this chapter, is of course a real place, and if you've never been, it's really beautiful and well worth a visit. Enjoy the chapter :)**

Shaz turned off the kitchen taps, stood the mugs upside down on the draining board and dried her hands on a tea-towel, making sure the lights were switched off before she left the room. The Guv, DI Drake and Ray were nowhere to be seen, and as she crossed the room to pick up her coat from her desk, she spotted something lying on top of a heap of files she'd been cross-referencing. It was a post-it note, with a message scrawled across it, unsigned but written in a hand she recognised instantly as the Guv's.

_Shaz – give this number a call. Might be able to give you and Chris a hand._

That was it, apart from the phone number scribbled at the bottom. Shaz frowned and tucked it into her coat pocket. She couldn't imagine why the Guv would leave her a number to ring, or why he'd write it on a post-it note rather than just telling her himself. Or, for that matter, what it was that he thought she and Chris needed help with. Oh well, she thought, it was hardly going to be anything mysterious. If she had a minute, she'd call the number that evening and find out what it was about. It couldn't be important, or the Guv would have told her about it earlier. Pausing only to switch off the lights on her way out, Shaz left the station and headed down the steps.

Chris was waiting for her on the corner. Although every day she told him she was fine walking home by herself, every day he insisted on coming to meet her. She knew he worried about what had happened before and, if she were honest with herself, walking home after dark still gave her the creeps. It was understandable, she supposed. Anyway, she didn't really mind him being overprotective as long as he did a better job of avoiding flying bullets in the future.

When she reached him he smiled and slipped an arm around her waist. "Anything interesting going on?" he asked wistfully, glancing over her shoulder at the station.

"Not much." She kissed him on the cheek. "Miss you, though."

He smiled at that. "I'll be back before you know it. They can't keep me away much longer or I'll go mad with boredom."

"We could do something this evening if you want?" she offered, taking his hand as they started to walk up the street. "I mean, only if you feel up to it. Pictures? Dinner?"

He grinned. "Sounds just the ticket."

It was exactly a week since the whole shooting fiasco, and although Chris was long since out of hospital, he hadn't been allowed to return to work yet. Shaz was glad of it, recent events having woken her up rather sharply to how dangerous the job was, but the inactivity was driving Chris round the bend. She knew that someday soon, much as he was going to have to start letting her walk round the corner by herself, she was going to have to accept that he _was _going to go back to work, back to risking his life and dodging bullets on a daily basis. She couldn't really complain; after all, she was there herself. But nevertheless, on some level she dreaded the day the doctors gave him the all clear. They'd been so lucky, all of them, and the idea that they might not be so lucky a second time terrified her.

"Tell you what," Chris said suddenly, breaking through her reverie, "how about I make you dinner first, and then we can go to the pictures?"

Shaz raised an eyebrow. "Thanks, but contracting food poisoning isn't high on my agenda tonight."

"Oi!" He looked slightly affronted. "It's all right, I'll find a recipe. And you can supervise."

She smiled. "All right then, you can cook. But I'll have the Chinese down the road on standby. Not to mention the fire extinguisher." They walked along the road in silence for a couple of minutes, and then she remembered something. "Can I borrow your phone when we get to yours? There's someone I want to ring."

"Course you can." He looked at her quizzically. "Who're you phoning?"

"Oh..." She fingered the note in her pocket, not sure why she wasn't telling him about it. "Just someone. It's probably nothing." But she couldn't help the mixture of excitement and intrigue that she felt at that moment. She couldn't help thinking that the Guv wouldn't have left her such a cryptic note if it hadn't been important. Why hadn't he just told her in person? She'd been around all day; it wouldn't have been difficult to have a word in private.

Chris frowned, but said nothing. Shaz linked her arm through his and grinned. "C'mon, I want you in that kitchen as soon as we get home, I'm starving."

Twenty minutes later, the phone back in its cradle, Shaz sat and stared at it, hardly able to comprehend what she'd just heard. Surely, it was impossible. She'd never in her wildest dreams thought that this could happen. The fact that she had the Guv to thank for this made the whole thing even more unbelievable.

Returning to the kitchen, she found Chris doing battle with a saucepan full of bubbling pasta sauce, his expression one of painful concentration. Wrapping her arms around his waist from behind, she pressed a kiss to his cheek and grinned.

"Guess what?"

* * *

It was early evening when they arrived, leaving the car behind them and walking along the gravel path beside the water in the gathering dusk. The sun was sinking in the sky, and their shadows lengthened before them, rippling over the ground. As they rounded the corner, stepping out from the cover of the trees, Shaz gasped, her hands flying to her mouth in surprise. Even Chris stopped in his tracks, stunned.

"Bloody hell," he said weakly.

"Oh, Chris..." Shaz reached out for his hand, her voice hushed. "It's _beautiful_."

"Yeah..." He swallowed. "Yeah, it is, isn't it?"

Chris had been, if possible, even more shocked than Shaz to find out what the Guv had done for them. It was so out of character that even now, when it was laid out in front of his eyes, he could hardly believe it. Like some kind of fairy godmother in crocodile skin, the Guv had waved a magic wand and found them the perfect place to get married. Trust him not to want to tell them himself. But the voice on the other end of the phone had explained it all perfectly. He'd owed the Guv a favour, he had an empty slot in a few weeks' time, and he'd be only too happy to help them. So it had all been arranged.

And here they were now, paying a visit to the place where, in just a few short weeks, they'd be getting married. Chris stared in complete awe at the wide moat, gleaming stones and sweeping turrets of Bodiam Castle and was lost for words. Shaz was right. It _was_ beautiful. It was so much more than either of them had ever dreamed of, so much more than he'd really believed existed, so much more than he could ever have given Shaz himself.

"Fancy a closer look?" He gestured to the drawbridge and Shaz nodded, her face lit up with a combination of delight and wonderment.

"Oh, wow..." she said breathlessly, her eyes wide as they stepped onto the bridge and made their way across the moat, which sparkled like a sea of sapphires in the last vestiges of the afternoon sun. Passing beneath the portcullis, they found themselves in a grassed courtyard, the deep orange sun glowing through the holes in the crumbling walls which sprawled across the grass and rose above them, stretching up into the sky. "This is going to be perfect."

"I know." Chris looked around them, taking in the curious beauty of what was, essentially, a crumbling ruin. Somehow, there was something about this place which made it special, made it so much more than a dilapidated castle. "I know I said we should have something simple, but..." He laughed. "I reckon this'll do."

Shaz nodded and rested her hand on the stone wall, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand as she gazed up at the turrets, her expression wondering, almost awestruck. "It's so lovely."

Chris smiled. There was something inexplicably romantic about this place, the ruined castle, the glittering moat, the way the last rays of the sun bathed the honey-coloured stone and made it glow as if from within. A flock of starlings flew overheard and came to rest on the topmost turrets, coming home. It was a place of such natural beauty, such complete and overwhelming simplicity, despite its once imposing battlements, that Chris felt a lump come to his throat. In that moment he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this was perfect.

He could picture it all so clearly: the chairs set out right here, where they were standing, so that they could get married in the open air; the flowers which would be strewn on the grass and wreathing the chairs and woven into Shaz's hair; the fairy lights which would twinkle from the turrets in the evening when the chairs were cleared away and they danced beneath the starry sky.

He wondered if Shaz was imagining the same things; her eyes still held their look of wonder as she gazed around her, and she seemed to be seeing more than what was there. Hesitantly, he held out a hand to her and she took it in silence, as if she were barely aware that he was there. A moment later he noticed, caught in the light of the dying sun, a single tear quivering on her cheek. He looked at her, a silent question, but she simply shook her head and moved closer to him, resting her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hair.

"Are you happy?" he asked quietly.

She looked up at him, her eyes huge and bright with unshed tears. "Yes," she whispered. "_So_ happy, Chris, it's...it's more than I ever..."

"Me too." He wound a strand of her hair around his finger. "It's a bit upmarket from what we had before, isn't it?"

She laughed, wiping away the tears with the back of her hand. "It is a bit. It's right though, isn't it? I don't know why, but...you can feel it as well, can't you? It's just..._right_."

"It's more than right. It's perfect." Suddenly he was filled with the urge to tell her that it wasn't just this place that was perfect; that _she _was perfect, that she was anything and everything he'd ever need, that she was the reason he lived and laughed and _breathed_. But as usual, he didn't have the words, and besides, he wasn't sure she really needed to hear them. So he just squeezed her hand. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Nothing. Everything."

She smiled. And as the shadows lengthened and the birds circled and the trees became silhouetted against the sky, Chris and Shaz stood hand in hand and watched the sinking sun set the moat on fire.

* * *

It had been a long, intense week. They had worked all day and late into the evenings, interviewing, gathering evidence, making sure the case was watertight. No one wanted Shaz's attacker to walk free and so no box remained unticked, no victim overlooked, no protocol ignored. They reinterviewed each of his earlier victims, an arduous, harrowing process which fell mainly to Alex, and she returned home every night physically and emotionally drained, crawling into bed and falling asleep within seconds.

They had barely seen each other outside of work. They had agreed to put their relationship on hold until the case was over, and now it was finished, wrapped up and handed over, and just for tonight, the world could wait.

She thought as he let himself in, kicking the door shut behind him and setting the takeaway containers on the table, how tired he looked. His tie hung loose, his shirt half-untucked and his hair tousled from running his hands through it, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to be close to him, to feel him against her, warmth to warmth, skin to skin.

She got up from the sofa and moved towards him, slipped her arms around his neck and took him by surprise with a kiss on his cheek. He smelled wonderful – cigarettes and whisky and musk and Gene – and she closed her eyes, rested her head in the cradle of his shoulder.

"All right, Bolly?" His voice was gruff, and it rumbled in his chest.

"Just missed you this week."

His arms came around her. "You've seen me every day, you dozy mare."

"_Hmm_." She sighed contentedly, wriggling further against him. She always felt so safe, when they were together. Like nothing could ever hurt her, just because he was there. Her very own protector. "Not properly though. It hasn't been just us since..." she trailed off. Why on earth did she feel so shy all of a sudden?

"Since I shagged you rotten, you mean?" he finished for her, and as she looked up at him, she caught the hint of a smug smile playing around his mouth.

She raised an eyebrow. "Ever the romantic." She let him go and stepped back to watch while he plated up their meals, chicken for her and pork for him. He turned round, shrugged at her.

"Where d'you want to eat? Here?" He nodded at the table.

"Let's have it on our laps." She picked up her plate and cocked her head, signalling for him to follow. "I'm too tired to bother laying the table now."

They ate in a companionable silence, her legs in his lap and his plate resting on her shins, and as they watched TV she kept sneaking glances at him, thrilling at the familiarity, at the intimacy of the scene. There was nothing erotic about it, nothing sexual, yet all the same she felt alive, because his very presence, dishevelled and exhausted as he was, was enough to set her on fire.

"It's a shame about Chris and Shaz having to cancel the wedding," she said eventually, as his hands slid down to rub her feet. "I don't suppose they'll be able to book another place at such short notice. Just think, all that time they spent planning it, and it was ruined by a schizophrenic with a tendency for the odd bout of megalomania."

He looked at her askance. "You do talk bollocks sometimes."

"You love it really." She leaned her head back against the arm of the sofa. "What do you think they'll do?"

"Who?" His eyes were on the television, where some old Western was being repeated on the BBC.

"Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee," she said sarcastically and he scowled at her. "Chris and Shaz, of course. I mean, think of the money they must have lost..."

There was a weighted silence, and she could tell he was fighting some kind of internal battle. Finally he looked at her, but it was a shy look, as though he was afraid she might mock, tease, laugh at him. When he spoke, his voice was carefully nonchalant. "Might've helped 'em out a bit."

She scrabbled to sit up. "What do you mean?"

He sniffed. "I've got a friend who works for the National Trust. He owes me one. Said he might let them use that castle down in Kent."

There was a pause where she stared at him, astonished. "Gene, do you mean _Bodiam Castle?_" He just looked at her from the corner of his eye, embarrassed, afraid to see her expression. "Bloody hell." She was stunned. "That's _incredible! _Oh Gene, they're going to be thrilled!" She was startled to find tears clouding her vision and she got up, moved over to drop herself into his lap. He met her gaze, eyes wide and surprised, and she cupped his face in her hands, thumbs sliding up to stroke his cheeks. "You wonderful, _wonderfu_l man."

He glanced away, self-conscious. "Steady on, Bolls, I haven't built the bloody place."

She forced him to look at her again, looked into those bright blue eyes and saw the insecurity, the discomfort and the embarrassment, and then slowly, torturously, she lowered her mouth to his. Her kiss was deliberately lingering, an unhurried dance of lips and tongues, wet and deep and full of meaning. In that moment, sitting in his lap with his hands on her back, self-conscious and shy before her, she thought she might burst with love for him.

Love.

Did she love him?

She broke the kiss and pulled back, smiling as he swept her tears away with the pads of his fingers. He was unendingly complex, completely infuriating, sexy as hell and full of surprises, and she knew then, body pressed close to his and his heart beating against her, that she was right. She _did _love him. She loved him fiercely and passionately and often with anger, but she loved him all the same.

She ran her hands slowly up his chest to rub his shoulders.

"That's a wonderful thing you've done," she said softly, tilting his head back when he tried to drop his gaze. "Look at me, Gene. You don't give yourself enough credit. They're going to have a fairytale wedding, thanks to you. You've made their dreams come true and they will never, ever forget that."

"They made mine come true too, in a way." He dropped his head to rest against her shoulder, trailing a slow line of kisses across her collarbone. "Had to pay them back somehow, didn't I?"

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well..." he darted a quick, nervous glance up at her before resuming his task. His kisses dipped lower, lips resting briefly over her heart. "If they hadn't been getting married and being all lovey-dovey that night in Luigi's, you'd never have taken advantage of me."

She pushed lightly at his shoulder. "I think you'll find it was _you _who took advantage of me."

He grinned up at her and she threaded her fingers lightly through his hair. "I was just having a fag. You came out and pounced on me, you wicked woman."

She didn't answer straight away and his kisses started again in a feeble attempt to distract her. Her heart was racing, half in anticipation and half in shock at his shy confession, and she chose her words carefully, aware that he had bared his soul, left himself wide open to her. She desperately didn't want him to regret it.

"Us sleeping together...that was your dream come true?"

He hesitated and then looked up at her, vulnerable suddenly, a little boy who craved her approval. Her heart swelled. "Too bloody right. Been waiting to get my hands on this arse of yours since you arrived." His hands slipped under her to squeeze her bottom. "That wasn't the whole dream though. Wanted to hold you, watch you sleep, know you'd be there when I woke up." He turned his head away and his fingers flexed against her. "Bloody nancy dream."

There were tears in Alex's eyes again, tears that made the whole world shine brighter, shimmer ephemerally under her gaze. She was speechless, overcome and overwhelmed, and she didn't have the words to express what it meant to her, hearing him say those things, how it made her feel. Instead she stroked her hand along his jaw and stared deep into his eyes, communicating a thousand things with that one look that she would never be able to put into words. Then she kissed him, achingly tender, heart-breakingly soft, and she knew wholly, unquestionably that he understood.

She broke off and rose up, trembling as she stood before him. She unbuttoned her blouse, let it slip like water down her arms, watched the awe unfold in his eyes and felt herself ignite. She moved to her jeans and peeled them off her legs until she stood there, clad only in her underwear, exposed, vulnerable, his for the taking. Then she held out her hand, felt him take it, his skin warm and dry against hers.

"You're beautiful, Alex," he murmured against her hair, fingers dancing like butterflies over her body, and she sighed, a chord of contentment and peace and _home_.

"Why did we wait so long?" she asked softly as he walked her backwards into the bedroom, feet keeping time as though this was some intricate, eloquent dance, and he kissed her neck, her cheek, the corner of her mouth.

"You're worth the wait."

There were no more words after that, only whispers and cries and soft sighs of contentment, and they made love in her bed with the moonlight pooling on the deep red sheets. When they were finally sated, they curled around each other like hedgehogs snuggling down for the winter, arms and legs entwined and her head tucked neatly under his, and then they slept, the deep, restful sleep of the truly happy.

Outside the window, the world kept turning, as people across the globe woke up to a new day and time continued its steady beat, but for now, the universe let them have this moment, these quiet hours of blissful serenity, before the sun rose once more and life moved relentlessly on.


	8. Chapter 8

**Here it is, the final chapter! First, we'd like to apologise for the delay in posting this chapter...being four hours apart for ten weeks wasn't conducive to writing! Thank you so much to all those who have stuck with this story; we hope you enjoy this chapter. A sequel is currently being planned, so look out for it in the new year! All that is left is to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year! :)**

Shaz took a deep breath and turned around, facing the mirror. She barely recognised herself. Her ivory dress fell in soft folds to the floor, matching kitten-heeled shoes peeping out from beneath her skirts. She'd decided against a veil, but her hair was threaded through with dusky pink rosebuds, picked out by the spray of pink and white flowers which she carried in her left hand.

Looking at herself in the full-length mirror, Shaz couldn't help a small, almost wondering laugh. "I look...different."

"You look bloody gorgeous." Angela paused in the middle of adjusting her taffeta sash and spun Shaz round to face her. "Proper blushing bride, you are."

"Thanks, Ange." Shaz had been worried that sparks might fly when Angela crossed paths with the Guv again; she'd heard from both DI Drake and from Angela herself that they hadn't exactly got on when they'd attempted to ask her some questions after Shaz had disappeared. But, so far, although Angela hadn't had more than a glimpse of the Guv as he took his seat outside, she seemed not to be nurturing any hard feelings.

"No problem." Angela finished her own adjustments and grinned. "How're you feeling?"

"Nervous." Shaz gulped. "_Really_ nervous."

Angela inspected her closely. "You do look a bit pale. You're sure you want to go through with this?"

Shaz laughed. "Pretty sure, yeah."

"Pretty sure?" Angela sniffed, ever the optimist. "I'd want to be more than pretty sure I wanted to marry someone just before I walked down the aisle."

Shaz shook her head, half-amused, half-despairing. "I do," she insisted. "More than anything. It's just...scary. All those people. What if something goes wrong?"

"Shaz, you worry too much. You always have," said Angela matter-of-factly. "You've been going on about this wedding for about three years –"

"Three years? Don't be ridiculous, Ange, I was barely even going out with Chris three years ago."

Angela raised one eyebrow. "Didn't stop you talking about it, if I remember rightly."

"Oh." Shaz blushed. "Well, anyway, I didn't _go on about it_."

Angela laughed. "Believe me, I was the one on the receiving end of most of it. _Anyway_," she said loudly, putting up her hands to forestall Shaz's objections, "my point is, you've been planning this day for so long, if anything's going to go wrong now, there's nothing you can do about it."

"I know." Shaz sighed. "Like I said, I'm just nervous."

"Don't be nervous, that's stupid." Not for the first time, Shaz wondered at her friend's grasp of tact. You were never in the dark with Angela; she said what she meant and she meant what she said. Sometimes it was a blessing, sometimes not so much. Today, Shaz was glad of it. Angela's blunt honesty was exactly what she needed to get through this. "Look, you're getting married, you're not walking the plank. It's all your friends out there, remember? This is going to be the best day of your life, Shaz. I promise." She paused for a second and looked at her watch. "Aren't you missing a bridesmaid?"

"Oh..." Shaz shook her head. "My mum's bringing Amy over in a minute. In fact –" She cocked her head, hearing voices. "Here they are."

A few seconds later, Shaz's mother appeared in the doorway, Chris's eight year old niece right behind her. "Sharon!" Mary stopped in her tracks and looked her daughter up and down. "You look beautiful, love."

"Thanks, Mum." Shaz smiled, feeling tears coming to her eyes. "Hiya, Amy. I knew that colour would suit you, you look lovely."

Amy smiled shyly at her. "Thanks. You look really pretty too."

Shaz's smile wobbled dangerously, and Mary was swift to descend with the tissues. "No tears today, sweetheart. You're going to love every minute."

"So Angela says." Shaz mopped up her tears and gave them a watery smile.

"Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, it's not the actual wedding that's the best bit, is it?" said Angela meaningfully. "It's what comes after."

"Oh yes, married life..." Mary gazed somewhat dreamily into the distance.

Angela winked at Shaz. "Not quite what I meant," she whispered in her ear. Shaz blushed scarlet and Angela laughed, reaching up to tuck one of Shaz's rosebuds more securely behind her ear.

"How long have I got?" Shaz tried to take deep, steady breaths. Forget butterflies, she felt as if a herd of elephants were using her stomach lining as a trampoline. It wasn't that she had doubts; she'd never been more sure of anything in her life than she was of wanting to marry Chris. It was just the feeling that her life was about to change completely, that nothing was ever going to be quite the same again, that was making her feel so nervous.

"Nearly everyone's sitting down," Mary told her, laying a hand on her arm. "Give it a few minutes yet, I think. The boys and your dad are keeping me a seat." She looked her daughter up and down once more and smiled, standing back, her own eyes suspiciously moist. "I'm so proud of you, Sharon. You're going to be so happy."

"I know." Shaz bit her lip to prevent the waterworks from starting up again. "I'm really nervous, but...I can't wait to be married. This is what I've always wanted, really." She giggled, slightly hysterical from nerves. "I'm going to be a married woman!"

"And you're going to be my aunt," piped up Amy, who was twirling in front of the mirror, watching her dress swirl out behind her.

"I am." Shaz smiled at her. "Is that a good thing, d'you think?"

"Yep." Amy spun to a halt and smiled bashfully. "I like you. I'm glad my uncle picked you to marry, and I'm glad I get to be your niece."

Shaz gave her a spontaneous hug, feeling a sudden rush of affection for the girl. "I'm glad I get to be your aunt as well. Maybe between the two of us we can keep that uncle of yours in line, what d'you reckon?"

"Shaz." Angela, who was positioned by the archway opening onto the path that was serving as an aisle, raised her eyebrows at her. "It's time."

"Already?" Shaz took a deep breath and held out a hand each to Angela and Amy, smiling at them. "Break a leg." She turned to her mother and kissed her on the cheek. "Go and find your seat, mum. I'll see you after the service." Then Shaz straightened her skirts, took up her flowers in her left hand and stepped out from beneath the arch.

* * *

The sun was setting as the ceremony came to an end, casting long shadows behind Chris and Shaz as they walked hand in hand from the courtyard. The castle looked eerily beautiful in the dying light, its crumbling walls silhouetted against a deep pink sky, the setting sun burning through the cracks in the grey stone. Clusters of candles flickered like fireflies in the windows, in the niches eked in the walls, throwing soft, ethereal shadows and casting a net of magic over the evening.

The ceremony was at once spectacular and intimate, held in the most magnificent of settings yet embellished with familiar touches and personal effects. The flowers strewn across the courtyard and tucked into Shaz's bouquet had been lovingly grown by Chris's dad, bunches of amaryllis, rosehip, camellias and cosmos, and the string quartet were friends of her mum, musicians who had played at Shaz's christening, her communion.

Beside Alex, Gene's hair shone fairer, caught in the glow of candle-light spilling from the alcove above his head, and she turned to him, squeezed his hand lightly, discreetly in hers.

"It was a lovely service, wasn't it?"

He returned her look, the corner of his mouth tipped up into a smile. "No idea. Wasn't paying attention."

She frowned. "It was mesmerising! The castle, the flowers, the candles..." she trailed off. "It was beautiful."

"I was thinking of something even better." His eyes twinkled at her. "I was remembering you naked."

"_Gene!_" She slapped at his hand where it slid over her knee but he ignored her, smug expression still firmly in place as he leaned in, his breath tickling the shell of her ear.

"You, naked, flushed, on those bloody awful red sheets." He moved away and sniffed. "Giving me the right horn."

She hid a smile. He was incorrigible, inappropriate and downright hopeless, but she couldn't help the thrill that shivered through her at his words, at his undisguised, unabashed desire. It made her feel feminine, delicate, and these were emotions she didn't often experience as a serving police officer who spent much of the day chasing criminal scum around London.

The bridal party had disappeared onto the drawbridge for photos and the majority of the congregation had ambled away to watch, so they were largely alone in the courtyard, watching the sun set over a fourteenth century castle.

"I think this is one of those moments I'll remember forever," she said softly, leaning her head on his shoulder and feeling his arm go around her. "It's beautiful."

There was a pause and then he spoke, voice gruff, embarrassed. "You beat it a hundred to one, Bollyknickers."

She smiled again, shifting so her head fit under his chin. "You're very sweet."

"The Gene Genie," he said indignantly, if predictably, "is not bloody sweet. Manc Lion, yes. Sex god, yes. Sweet? No chance."

She didn't answer him, was content to sit there on the uncomfortable chair in the cold evening and watch the stars come out, tiny beacons of light in a crimson sky. She thought about the dreams she had, those fleeting images she never quite understood, and then the one man who had somehow managed to quiet her nightmares. She would never tell him, because he'd call her a soppy cow and probably never let her live it down, but the two nights they'd slept in her bed, tangled up in each other, she hadn't dreamt of the faceless girl, the child who chased her through her nightmares and whom she recognised with an incomprehensible sense of loss. She hoped Chris and Shaz would find that same peace in each other. God knew, they deserved it.

"Do you think they'll last?" she asked finally, once the sky had darkened and the sounds of merriment began to drift across the moat, and he gave her a sideways look.

"Want me to get out my crystal ball?"

She smiled. "Piss off."

He sighed. "I dunno, Bolls. He'll do anything he can to keep her, if he's got any sense. She's good for him."

"Hmm. I think they'll stay together. They're like..." she frowned, trying to remember. "Worms."

He sat back and gave her an incredulous look. "Real romantic, you are. Probably best not to tell the bride on her wedding day that you think she looks like a worm." He paused. "Have you been drinking?"

She laughed, leaning in to kiss his cheek. "Adorable man. I don't mean in terms of looks. There's a special type of worm that mates for life, it was in a book I read once. One mate until they die, very romantic indeed."

"Except for the fact that they're worms."

She nodded. "Except for the fact that they're worms."

He hesitated for a second as if he was about to speak, but then he got to his feet and held out his hand. "Come on then, Mrs Bug-lover. Let's go and get a drink inside you."

She let him pull her to her feet and then leaned against him for a moment, arms around his waist and lips on his neck. She kissed a slow trail up to his mouth and smiled against his lips as his hands found her bottom, pulling her flush against him.

"Thought you wanted a drink," she murmured as he turned to dabbing kisses across her face, and he stopped abruptly and pulled away, leaving her bereft in the cold night air.

"You're right."

She groaned, reaching out for him. "You're evil."

He grinned at her and took her hand again, lacing his fingers through hers and towing her out of the courtyard behind him.

"You owe me a dance, by the way," she said as she followed him under the archway, trying to hide a smile. "I'm not going to let you _wriggle _out of that one."

He groaned. "That was awful. Really made me sq_worm_."

She burst out laughing, lifting their joined hands to pull his arm around her shoulders. He squeezed her lightly and they walked on towards the marquees glowing across the water, while the stars twinkled merrily above them.

* * *

Ray glanced down the table and pretended, for the fourth or fifth time, not to have caught Chris's eye as he did so. The time for his speech was drawing near and, although he would never admit it, he was practically wetting himself. He was beginning to regret saying he'd make a speech at all, but he'd been steadfastly ignoring Chris's pointed eyebrow messages for a good five minutes, and he knew that at some point he was going to have to bite the bullet and do it.

It wasn't as if he was the first person to stand up and give a speech; the bride had already stepped up to the mark. Trust Shaz, Ray had thought, to have insisted on giving a speech at her own wedding. _Bloody feminists. _He couldn't imagine that Shaz would ever have consented to keep quiet, so he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. But, somehow, the bride standing up and talking for five minutes about how happy she was, interspersed with a few tears and culminating in an obligatory kiss from the newlyweds, crowd-pleasing as it might be, just didn't have quite the same pressure or expectations attached to it as the traditional best man's speech.

Shaz had even given Ray a list of things he wasn't allowed to include in his speech, among which drunken anecdotes, crude jokes and dubious romantic liaisons featured heavily. This was a source of particular irritation to Ray, who had a number of _those_ up his sleeve which would have been new on Shaz as well as pretty much the entire audience. But then, he thought, glancing down the table to where Chris and Shaz's parents were sitting, perhaps some of his choicest anecdotes might not have been entirely appropriate for the occasion.

For the third time in as many minutes, Chris coughed pointedly in Ray's direction and, with a sigh, he abandoned his pretence of ignorance. Getting to his feet, he waved a hand vaguely around the room. "All right, you lot, can I have a bit of quiet?"

Almost immediately, the room fell suddenly, completely, silent. Ray swallowed. "Er...thanks. Well, this is a day I never thought I'd see." He glanced nervously around the room, loosening his bowtie with two fingers. Spotting the Guv and DI Drake sitting at a table to the left of theirs, he attempted a fairly unsuccessful grin in their direction. The Guv was wearing an expression that suggested that he was waiting avidly for Ray to mess up, but DI Drake smiled and flipped him a quick thumbs up, and Ray nodded, determined to do his best. "I've known Chris here a long time," he began. "I've got a lot of stories, some of which don't bear repeating, and anyway, I'm not allowed to." He shot a mock glare at Shaz, earning himself a few titters from his audience.

Strengthened by their laughter, Ray let out a shaky breath. "So I'm afraid you're going to have to make do with the tamer stuff, folks. In case you're wondering," he added as an afterthought, "I had some bloody good jokes about truncheons and handcuffs worked into this, but they've been banned as well. So if you want to hear them later, just come and find me." He caught sight of Shaz rolling her eyes and winked at her. "Anyway, like I said, I've known Chris a long time. He can be a right div at times. I mean, _really_. Like you wouldn't believe. The number of times I've got him out of scrapes he's got himself into...you'd be amazed. Sometimes I think he's like the kid brother I never had – the irritating one who follows you all over the place and nicks your stuff and says stupid things when your mates are round. He even supports Manchester bloody City. But – and you wouldn't normally catch me saying this – he's my best mate." Ray glanced down the table at Chris, who suddenly seemed to have something in his eye. "And I'm chuffed that I got to be here today to see this." He paused. "Course, I'm even more chuffed that I get to be here for the next few years to see him make a mess of it. That's going to be worth watching."

There was a smattering of laughter, mostly directed at Chris, who looked extremely alarmed. Shaz kissed her new husband on the cheek and laughed, and Ray grinned at her. "And Shaz – well, what can I say? Had her down as a nutcase as soon as I laid eyes on her." The woman in question raised her eyebrows somewhat threateningly at him, and Ray hastened on with the speech. "But she's exactly what Chris needs, and what he wants, and for some reason that will forever escape me, she appears to want him too." Ray caught Shaz's eye again. She was smiling now, her eyes moist. "We've had our moments, me and Shaz," he went on, "We've not always got on as well as we might have...she can be a right pain in the arse when she wants to be." More laughter. "But I'll say it myself, she's pretty special, is our Shaz. And it's not often you'll hear me say that, so make a note of it."

There were smiles all round, and even the Guv looked slightly emotional, though he hurriedly tried to hide it behind his customary frown. Chris beamed at Ray, Shaz wiped away what looked suspiciously like a tear, and Ray cleared his throat before he, horror of horrors, went the same way. "Anyway, you've heard just about enough from me, I reckon. All that's left for me to do is say that I know Chris and Shaz are going to be bloody happy together, and wish them all the luck in the world." He paused. "They say you have to combine the brains and the beauty when you get married. Luckily she's got both." Grinning, he turned to Chris and Shaz and raised his glass. "To the bride and groom."

* * *

It was approaching midnight and the mood had mellowed, the hilarity of Ray's speech and the anxiety of the bride and groom all melting away to leave an atmosphere of warm goodwill. Outside, the air was bitterly cold, but the press of bodies created a bubble of heat that was only occasionally penetrated by an icy breeze, and couples swayed on the dancefloor, wrapped up in each other.

Gene had been looking at her all night. He sat opposite, flanked by Terry and Bammo, while she had Poirot on her left and Viv on her right, and she'd felt his eyes on her throughout dinner, burning with such intensity that she almost flushed beneath his gaze. Now that the meal was over and the others had drifted away to the bar or to rib the few plods Chris had invited, she turned deliberately away from him, elbow on the back of her chair and chin on hand, eyes following the slow movements of the dancers a few feet away.

He dropped suddenly into the chair Viv had vacated and she jumped, tensing as his hand stole over her knee to smooth up her thigh.

"_Guv_."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Guv now, is it? Can't say I mind, but if you're up for a bit of role-play, 'Sir' is more of a turn-on."

She gave him a look, but didn't reply. There was a pause and then his hand slid over her leg to take her hand where it rested in her lap, linking his fingers lightly, almost shyly, through hers.

"So, Lady Bolls...fancy a dance?"

She smiled, decided to take pity on him just this once. Gene Hunt did not dance, and any show by the two of them that wasn't strictly Ma'am-and-the-Guv would undoubtedly set tongues wagging.

"That's sweet, Gene, but you don't have to. The vultures would be all over us like a rash."

He tugged on her hand, urging her to look at him. "_Alex_." She did. "I want to dance with you."

She looked him in the eye, felt both intensely connected and strangely detached, locked into his gaze yet still an observer, a profiler, a spectator. His eyes, that bright, surprising blue, had slid away from hers, and a lock of dark blonde hair had fallen forward across his forehead, making him look younger, more vulnerable. His hand held hers with unaccustomed hesitation, his body half-turned away to put up a show of nonchalance. She realised suddenly how much this cost him, how very difficult it was to peel off the hard, fearsome skin of DCI Hunt and show her – and everyone else, now – the soft heart within.

She smiled at him, a slow smile, a warm smile, and stood up, his hand still in hers as she looked down at him. He hesitated for a fraction of a second and then got to his feet, broad and solid and vulnerable before her, leading her onto the dance floor with something akin to pride.

The whispers started before they arrived, when they were still moving towards the crowd of bodies swaying to the beat, but Alex ignored them and turned into his body, into the warmth and smell of him. He held her like a piece of glass, their hands linked between them and an arm wrapped around her waist, and it occurred to her that it had been a long time since she'd felt this safe.

She had a sudden flashback to her childhood, when she'd fallen asleep in the back of the car and her father had carried her inside. She remembered the green wool of his jumper, the clean, sharp smell of him, the way, when she opened her eyes, the streetlight glinted on his glasses. She remembered being placed in her bed and covered with her quilt, and then left to sleep in the quiet darkness of her room. She had a sneaking suspicion she would not be sleeping alone tonight.

"Bolls?" Gene's voice was low in her ear but she jumped anyway. "You were miles away. My dancing isn't that bad, is it?"

She smiled and tucked her head back against his neck. "Sorry. I was just thinking about my father."

There was a pause. "Not the most erotic thing you've ever said, I've got to admit."

She looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "I was just thinking about how safe I felt. Feel. My father died a long time ago, Gene, and he definitely wouldn't approve of you." She laughed, a little sadly.

"And you, Bolls?" He turned them in a slow circle. "Do you approve of me?"

She drew back to meet his gaze. "Very much. You're a wonderful man, Gene."

"You're going to make me blush." His voice was gruff, sarcastic, but he guided her head back to his shoulder. They swayed together for a moment, oblivious to the song, to the company, to anything but each other and this tentative intimacy binding them together, and Alex gave in, closed her eyes. For the briefest of seconds, she felt the tug of loss, a vast chasm of sadness, and then he squeezed her hand and it passed, a dip lost in the daily sweep of emotion.

When she opened her eyes, it was to see their colleagues clustered at a table, watching them with varied expressions. The most common, she was surprised to note, was neutrality, as though this eventuality had long been agreed upon and this was just its visible manifestation. Chris and Shaz were entwined, her head on his shoulder and matching smiles on both their faces, so that when she met their gaze, Chris winked, a gesture that was somehow proud, absurdly paternal. Ray stood a little apart, his expression one of discomfort, but then he glanced up and caught Gene's eye and something passed between them, an unspoken conversation between old friends, and Ray nodded once. An acceptance. A blessing.

"They'll be fine," she whispered, and he nodded against her.

"And you, Bolls? Will you be all right?"

She looked at him in surprise. "What on earth do you mean?"

"All that stuff with Shaz, with the rapist. It wasn't easy for any of us. And you used to be so intent on getting home, on getting away from here." He hesitated. "Getting away from me. Are you still going to up and leave the first chance you get?"

The tiniest flutter of memory brushes over Alex's mind and then it's gone. "We're police officers; we see bad things happen all the time and we have to just move on. Shaz is fine, I'm fine, we're all fine. And as for home...home's where you are, now."

His hand tightened on her waist for a moment and his head fell to her shoulder, a gesture of such submission, such complete trust that her heart ached to see it.

"Because the thing is, Bolls," he looked up at her now, self-conscious, vulnerable, painfully open, "somewhere in amongst all the arguments and your psychotwattery and seeing your infuriating arse in my station every day, I think you've become my worm...if you know what I mean."

There was a beat of silence. Alex was suddenly blinded by tears, tears of surprise, of happiness, of unbroken love for this complex, difficult man who had fallen in love with her and whom she loved with equal intensity, and for once in her life she was lost, utterly lost for words.

He saw her shock, noticed it in the way she trembled in his arms, and so Gene Hunt did something miraculous – he kissed her, right there in the middle of the dance floor, while the lights twinkled on and the music played and their colleagues erupted into raucous applause.

And then, when it had all died away and she buried her face in his neck, laughing and blushing, he just whispered two words in her ear:

"I know."

* * *

"Ray, what are you doing?" Alex watched him with a frown of admonition. He glared back at her.

"Taking this bloody bow tie off. It's been strangling me all day." He sighed in relief and rubbed his throat with the air of a condemned man offered a reprieve. "Anyway, you're hardly one to talk about decorum, after that little display on the dance floor."

Ordinarily, Alex would probably have snapped at him, but she was drunk on wine and Gene and the atmosphere, and so she just smiled, chin on hand and eyes gold in the candelight.

"Jealousy is highly unattractive, Ray."

"Jealous? Who's jealous? All this nancy wedding stuff isn't for me. Right bloody palaver, isn't it, Guv?"

Gene, who had been watching the children skid gleefully across the deserted dance floor, looked up at the sound of his own name.

"Total waste of time," he agreed, but there was laughter in his eyes. "The boredom's only been slightly relieved by having a bit of a grope on the dance floor."

Alex rolled her eyes. "You're as bad as he is." Her gaze travelled slowly around the marquee, taking in the flickering candles, the twinkling fairy lights, the tired well-wishers drinking wine and swapping tales about the bride and groom. "It's been a lovely day."

Gene sniffed. "Not bad, as weddings go."

"I don't know...all seems a bit of a fuss about nothing to me," Ray added indifferently.

Alex raised an eyebrow, leaning forward and resting her fingertips on his arm, voice low and wicked. "If it's all a fuss about nothing, why were you crying like a baby when Chris said 'I do'?"

Gene let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Raymondo, you big girl's blouse!"

Alex gave him a look. "And don't pretend you were dry-eyed either."

The men fell silent and Alex sat back in satisfaction. Her hand, entwined with Gene's, rested on her knee under the table, and his thumb stroked her skin, a steady, almost unconscious action that made her shiver, even after all that had passed between them.

Ray glanced up as Chris and Shaz appeared behind them, collapsing gratefully into Poirot and Viv's vacated seats. "Oh look, it's the newlyweds. How's the missus?"

Shaz rolled her eyes. "Watch it, Ray, I may be wearing a wedding dress but I could still have you on the floor with your ankles behind your ears before you have time to light that fag you're hoping I haven't noticed you hiding under the table."

Gene winced. "Blimey, Christopher, sure you know what you've got yourself into? She doesn't miss a trick, this one."

Chris looked slightly worried. "Don't I know it, Guv."

Alex leaned across the table to touch Shaz's hand briefly. "Congratulations again, you two. You're going to be very happy."

Shaz beamed. "Thanks, Ma'am." For a second her eyes flicked between Alex and Gene, and something unspoken hung in the air between them.

Oblivious, Ray reached across the table for the champagne bottle and offered it to Shaz, and the moment passed in silence. "Top-up, Mrs. Skelton?"

"Cheers, Ray." Shaz slid her glass across the table towards him. "I never thought I'd say it, but you're being quite the gentleman today."

Ray shrugged offhandedly. "Not every day you get married, is it? Might as well knock back a bit of bubbly when you get the chance."

"Well said, Raymondo." Gene intercepted the bottle from Ray and poured himself a sizeable measure, before topping up Alex's glass and shoving what was left of the bottle rather unceremoniously in Chris's direction. "You never know when you're going to give up the ghost. Might as well enjoy the free booze while you can."

Alex twirled the stem of her glass between her fingers. "Crude, but almost Epicurean, Gene."

"Epi-what, woman?"

"Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die," Alex explained. "Live in the present. No looking back, no looking forward." She wrinkled her nose. "I think there's a lot to be said for looking forward, personally. On days like this, anyway." She smiled at the group around her, the colleagues who had gradually, almost imperceptibly, become friends. She looked from Chris and Shaz, who were only beginning to realise how lucky they were, to Ray, who despite his steadfastly Neanderthal attitude had become more of a friend than she'd ever thought possible, and finally her gaze fell on Gene, and she was suffused with such a mixture of confusing, contradictory, _wonderful_ feelings that she didn't know where to begin in defining them. So, instead of trying to put all of that into words, she just smiled. "The future looks pretty good from where I'm standing."

"I'll drink to that." said Ray with a grin, after a slight pause. "In fact, as my last duty as best man, let's make it a toast." He raised his glass. "To the future."

"To the future," Alex echoed. "Whatever it may bring."

"Hear, hear." Chris tucked his arm around Shaz and chinked his glass against hers. "To the future."

"To the future," added Gene gruffly, his gaze lingering on Alex for a moment as his glass touched hers. "And let's hope it's a bloody good one."

There were smiles all round, and as the sparkling champagne danced in the crystal glasses and the birds flocked down to roost in the crumbling ruins beneath the velvety sky, they had every confidence that it would be.


End file.
